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Climate change has increased the area affected by forest fires each year in boreal North America. Increases in burned area and fire frequency are expected to stimulate boreal carbon losses. However, the impact of wildfires on carbon emissions is also affected by the severity of burning. How climate change influences the severity of biomass burning has proved difficult to assess. Here, we examined the depth of ground-layer combustion in 178 sites dominated by black spruce in Alaska, using data collected from 31 fire events between 1983 and 2005. We show that the depth of burning increased as the fire season progressed when the annual area burned was small. However, deep burning occurred throughout the fire season...
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The U.S. Geological Survey project Fate of Carbon in Alaskan Landscapes(FOCAL) is studying the effect of fire and soil drainage on soil carbon storage in the boreal forest. This project has selected several sites to study within central Alaska of varying ages (time since fire) and soil drainage types. This report describes the location of these sampling sites, as well as the procedures used to describe, sample, and analyze the soils. This report also contains data tables with this information, including, but not limited to field descriptions, bulk density, particle size distribution, moisture content, carbon (C) concentration, nitrogen (N) concentration, isotopic data for C, and major, minor and trace elemental...
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Fire is a particularly important control on the carbon (C) balance of the boreal forest, and fire-return intervals and fire severity appear to have increased since the late 1900s in North America. In addition to the immediate release of stored C to the atmosphere through organic-matter combustion, fire also modifies soil conditions, possibly affecting C exchange between terrestrial and atmospheric pools for decades after the burn. The effects of fire on ecosystem C dynamics vary across the landscape, with topographic position and soil drainage functioning as important controls. The data reported here contributed to a larger U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study, published in the journal Ecosystems by O’Donnell...
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Peatlands in the northern permafrost region store large amounts of organic carbon, most of which is currently stored in frozen peat deposits. Recent warming at high-latitudes has accelerated permafrost thaw in peatlands, which will likely result in the loss of soil organic carbon from previously frozen peat deposits to the atmosphere. Here, we report soil organic carbon inventories, soil physical data, and field descriptions from a collapse-scar bog chronosequence located in a peatland ecosystem at Koyukuk Flats National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
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