Michigan Tech expert available: Mega wildfires release soil carbon into the atmosphere

How long do more extensive and severe fire years have to occur before we stop calling them anomalies, and we accept them as the “new normal”? Climate extremes—including longer periods of drought and also more intense precipitation—have become the rule and not the exception in the Pacific Northwest, western Canada, and boreal and arctic Alaska.

Evan Kane, associate professor and soil carbon storage expert at Michigan Technological University, has been studying the effects of wildfires in conifer forests of the Canadian and Alaskan boreal and arctic forests in the wake of the extreme wildfires in recent years.

His research centers on the observation that while some ecosystems were thought to be resistant to burning — particularly peatlands and lowland conifer forest — in fact, these ecosystems do burn in large fire years, releasing incredible amounts of sequestered soil carbon into the atmosphere.

For example, nearly four million hectares burned in wetlands of western Northwest Territories in 2014 to 2015, and the 2016 Horse River fire in Alberta (3.4 million hectares) was the most expensive natural disaster in Canada’s history. 

These patterns are certainly translatable to the fires occurring here in the contiguous U.S., with extensive wildfire in western conifer forests displaying very different behavior than previously seen. 

Contact:

Evan Kane
[email protected]