Carbon Emissions during Wildland Fire on a North American Temperate Peatland

• Published in: Fire ecology Vol. 13; no. 1; pp. 34 - 57
• Main Authors: Mickler, Robert A., Welch, David P., Bailey, Andrew D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.04.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Airborne sensing; Biomass; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Carbon; Coastal plains; Combustion; Digital Elevation Models; Ecology; Elevation; Emissions; Foliage; Global navigation satellite system; Global positioning systems; GPS; Hydrologic regime; Hydrology; Land management; Leaves; Life Sciences; Organic soils; Peat; Peatlands; Polls & surveys; Quality; Remote sensing; Research Article; Smoldering; Soil surveys; Soils; Vegetation; Wildfires; land management LIDAR; burn severity; hydrologic regime; wildfire; carbon emissions; organic soils; coastal plain; temperate peatlands
• ISSN: 1933-9747; 1933-9747
• DOI: 10.4996/fireecology.1301034

Northern temperate zone (30° to 50° latitude) peatlands store a large proportion of the world’s terrestrial carbon (C) and are subject to high-intensity, stand-replacing wildfires characterized by flaming stage combustion of aboveground vegetation and long-duration smoldering stage combustion of organic soils. Coastal peatlands are a unique region in which long-duration wildfire soil combustion is responsible for the majority of total annual emissions from all wildfires in the North American coastal plain. We developed a new method and approach to estimate aboveground and belowground C emissions from a 2008 peatland wildfire by analyzing vegetation C losses from field surveys of biomass consumption from the fire and soil C losses derived from the Soil Survey Geographic Database, a digital elevation model derived from airborne optical remote-sensing technology and ground elevation surveys using a Global Navigation Satellite System receiver. The approach to estimate belowground C emissions employed pre-fire LI-DAR-derived elevation from ground return points coupled with post-fire survey-grade GPS elevation measurements from co-located ground return points. Aboveground C emission calculations were characterized for litter, shrub foliage and woody biomass, and tree foliage fractions in different vegetation classes, thereby providing detailed emissions sources. The estimate of wildland fire C emissions considered the contribution of hydrologic regime and land management to fire severity and peat burn depth. The peatland wildfire had a mean peat burn depth of 0.42 m and resulted in estimated belowground fire emissions of 9.16 Tg C and aboveground fire emissions of 0.31 Tg C, for total fire emissions of 9.47 Tg C (1 Tg = 10 12 grams). The mean belowground C emissions were estimated at 544.43 t C ha −1 , and the mean aboveground C emissions were 18.33 t C ha −1 (1 t = 10 6 grams).