Spatio-temporal characterisation of boreal forest fire intensify dynamics and its impact on carbon fluxes

A new research project supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council

Scientific goal: Improved understanding of spatio-temporal patterns and dynamics of boreal fire intensity and extent, the driving factors behind these variations, and the consequences for C fluxes.

Approach: Development, validation and implementation of new Earth Observation algorithms to improve spatial and temporal characterisation of boreal forest fires.

Summary: Boreal forests comprise one third of the global forested area and are the largest terrestrial carbon store. Russia contains 70% of Earth's boreal forest, and N. America (Canada, Alaska) 25%. Forest fires are the regions most dynamic disturbance factor, occurring mainly in Siberia, Russian Far East, Canada and Alaska, and these fires represent a globally important release of terrestrial C to the atmosphere, via the burning of vegetation and organic soils. Currently the boreal region is believed to be a net carbon sink, but climate change predictions indicate significant boreal warming, with consequent increases in fire activity and C release. Ultimately, the boreal zone may become a net C source through forest fires and increased soil decomposition, and there is evidence that the Canadian forest may have already made this transition. Critical to estimating both direct and longer-term fire-related perturbations to boreal C storage is knowledge of fire extent, intensity and/or type, which has strong controls on forest fire 'damage', the fraction of available fuel combusted, and patterns of post-fire regrowth. These variables are currently derived from model-based assessments of often uncertain accuracy, introducing large uncertainties to current C flux calculations made using even state-of-the-art approaches.

We will provide new observational data on these parameters, combining spaceborne Fire Radiative Power (FRP) and burned area observations to investigate boreal forest fire patterns and spatio-temporal dynamics. Our new observational data will significantly improve insight into the northern hemisphere fire regime, leading to more realistic C flux quantification in the boreal biome and subsequently to a better quantitative understanding of the role of boreal forest fires in the global atmospheric carbon record 

Grant duration: 1 October 2005 - 30 September 2008

The Project Team

Principal Investigator

Dr. Martin Wooster, King’s College London, email martin.wooster@kcl,ac.uk

Wooster, M.J and Zhang, Y.-H. (2004) Boreal Forest Fires Bum Less Intensely in Russia than in North America (2004) Geophysical Research Letters, 31, doi:10.1029/2004GL020805

Wooster, M.J., Ferry, G., Zukov, B. and Oertel, D. (2004) Biomass Burning Emissions Inventories: Modelling and remote sensing of fire intensity and biomass combustion rates, in Spatial Modelling of the Terrestrial Environment, eds. R. Kelly, N. Drake and S. Barr, Wiley, 175-1

Y.-H. Zhang, Wooster, M.J., Tutubalina, O. and Peny, G.L.W. (2003) Monthly burned area and forest fire carbon emission estimates for the Russian Federation from SPOT VGT, Remote Sensing of Environment, 87, 1-15

Wooster, M.J., Zhukov, B. and Oertel, D. (2003) Fire radiative energy for quantitative study of biomass burning: Derivation from the BIRD experimental satellite and comparison to MODIS fire products, Remote Sensing of Environment, 86, 83-107

Wooster, M.J., (2002) Small-scale experimental testing of fire radiative energy for quantifying mass combusted in natural vegetation fires, Geophysical Research Letters, 29(21), 2027, doi:10.1029n002GL01 5487

CO – Investigators:

Dr. Heiko Balzter NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and Climate and Land Surface Systems Interaction Centre (CLASSIC), email hbal@ceh.ac.uk

Balzter, H., Gerard, F.F., George, C.T., Rowland, C.S., Jupp, T.E., McCallum, i., Shvidenko, A., Niisson, S., Sukhinin, A., Onuchin, A. and Schmuliius, C. (2005 in press): Impact of the Arctic Oscillation pattern on interannual forest fire variability in Central Siberia, Geophysical Research Letters doi 10.1029/2005GL022526

Wagner, W., Luckman, A., Vietmeier, J., Tansey, K., Balzter, H., et al. (2003). Large-Scale Mapping of Boreal .Forest in SIBERIA using ERS Tandem Coherence and JERS Backscatter Data, Remote Sensing of Environment, 85, p125-144.

Balzter, H., Talmon. E., Wagner, W., Gaveau, D., et al. (2002. Accuracy assessment of a large-scale forest map of Central Siberia from Synthetic Aperture Radar. Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, 28, p719-737.

Dr. France Gerard NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH)

Gerard, F., Plummer, S., Wadsworth, R., Ferreruela, A., Iliffe, L., Balzter, H. and Wyatt, B. (2003). Forest fire scar detection in the boreal forest with multi-temporal SPOT-VEGETATION. IEEE Trans. on Geosci and Remote Sens. 41, 2575-2585.

Gerard, F, 2003. Single angle, dual angle and multi-temporal viewing: assessing through modelling the implications for forest structure variable extraction, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 24, 1317-1334.

Dr Jörg Kaduk University of Leicester, email: j.kaduk@le.ac.uk

Alton P.B., North, P., Kaduk, J., Los S. (2005). Radiative Transfer Modeling of Direct and Diffuse Sunlight in a Siberian Pine Forest. Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, 110, D23209, doi:10.1029/2005JD006060

Field, C.B. and Kaduk, J., (2004) The C balance of an old-growth forest: Building across approaches. Ecosystems, 7, 525-533.

Schaefer, K., Scott,A., Suits, N., Kaduk, J., et al., (2002) The effect of climate on inter-annual variability of terrestrial CO₂ fluxes. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 16, 4, 49-1.

Recognised Researcher

Dr Gareth Roberts King's College London

Roberts, G. (2001) Review of application of BRDF models to infer land cover parameters. Frog. Phys. Geog. 25. 4. 483-511.

Schaaf. C. B., Gao, F., Strahler, A. H., Lucht, W., Li, X., Tsang, T., Strugnell, N. C., Zhang, X., Jin, Y., Muller, J-P., Lewis, P., Bamsley, M., Hobson, P., Disney, M., Roberts, G., Dunderdde, M., Doll, C., d'Entremont, R. P., Hu, B., Liang, S., Privette, J. P., (2002) First operational BRDF, albedo nadir reflectance products from MODIS. Remote Sensing of Environment, 83. 135-148.

Privette, J. P., Tian, Y., Roberts, G., et al (2004) Vegetation structure characteristics and relationships of Kalahari woodlands and savannahs. Global Change Biology. 10. 281-291.

Project Partners

Mr Tim Lynham Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service

Stocks, B.J., Lawson, B.D., Alexanda, M.E., Van Wagner, C.E., McAlpine, RS., Lynham, TJ., and Du, D.E. 1989. Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System: an Overview. For. Chron. 65(6):450-457.

Stocks, B.J., and Lynham, TJ. 1996. Fire weather climatology in Canada and Russia p. 481-487 in Fire in Ecosystems of boreal Eurasia. J.G. Goldammer and V.V. Furyaev (ed), Kluwer Academic Publ., Netherlands.

Stocks, BJ., Fosber& M.A., Lynham, TJ., Mearns, L., Wotton,B.M., Yang, Q., Jin, J-Z., Lawrence, K., Hartley, G.R., Mason, J.A., and McKenny, D.W. 1997. Climate change and forest fire potential in Russian and Canadian boreal forests. Climatic Change 38: 1-13 (1998).

Prof. Anatoly Shvidenko International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria

Shvidenko, A. and Nilsson S (2002) Dynamics of Russian forests and the carbon budget in 1961-1998: An assessment based on long-term forest inventory data, Clim. Change, 55, 5-37

Nilsson, S., Shvidenko, A., StolboYoi, V., Gluck, M., Jonas, M. andObersteiner, M. (2000) Full Carbon Account for Russia, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Report IR-00-021, 191pp.

DR ALEXANDER ONUCHI[M V.N. Sukachev Institute of Forest, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Krasnoyarsk, Russia

PhD Students

Mr. Daniel Smith