Spatial and temporal dimensions of fire activity in the fire‐prone eastern Canadian taiga
Abstract The forest age mosaic is a fundamental attribute of the North American boreal forest. Given that fires are generally lethal to trees, the time since last fire largely determines the composition and structure of forest stands and landscapes. Although the spatiotemporal dynamics of such mosai...
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crwiley:10.1111/gcb.13461 2024-06-23T07:57:07+00:00 Spatial and temporal dimensions of fire activity in the fire‐prone eastern Canadian taiga Erni, Sandy Arseneault, Dominique Parisien, Marc‐André Bégin, Yves Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Hydro-Québec ArcticNet 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13461 https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fgcb.13461 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/gcb.13461 en eng Wiley http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor Global Change Biology volume 23, issue 3, page 1152-1166 ISSN 1354-1013 1365-2486 journal-article 2016 crwiley https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13461 2024-06-13T04:23:52Z Abstract The forest age mosaic is a fundamental attribute of the North American boreal forest. Given that fires are generally lethal to trees, the time since last fire largely determines the composition and structure of forest stands and landscapes. Although the spatiotemporal dynamics of such mosaics has long been assumed to be random under the overwhelming influence of severe fire weather, no long‐term reconstruction of mosaic dynamics has been performed from direct field evidence. In this study, we use fire length as a proxy for fire extent across the fire‐prone eastern Canadian taiga and systematically reconstruct the spatiotemporal variability of fire extent and fire intervals, as well as the resulting forest age along a 340‐km transect for the 1840–2013 time period. Our results indicate an extremely active fire regime over the last two centuries, with an overall burn rate of 2.1% of the land area yr −1 , mainly triggered by seasonal anomalies of high temperature and severe drought. However, the rejuvenation of the age mosaic was strongly patterned in space and time due to the intrinsically lower burn rates in wetland‐dominated areas and, more importantly, to the much‐reduced likelihood of burning of stands up to 50 years postfire. An extremely high burn rate of ~5% yr −1 would have characterized our study region during the last century in the absence of such fuel age effect. Although recent burn rates and fire sizes are within their range of variability of the last 175 years, a particularly severe weather event allowed a 2013 fire to spread across a large fire refuge, thus shifting the abundance of mature and old forest to a historic low. These results provide reference conditions to evaluate the significance and predict the spatiotemporal dynamics and impacts of the currently strengthening fire activity in the North American boreal forest. Article in Journal/Newspaper taiga Wiley Online Library Global Change Biology 23 3 1152 1166 |
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Wiley Online Library |
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crwiley |
language |
English |
description |
Abstract The forest age mosaic is a fundamental attribute of the North American boreal forest. Given that fires are generally lethal to trees, the time since last fire largely determines the composition and structure of forest stands and landscapes. Although the spatiotemporal dynamics of such mosaics has long been assumed to be random under the overwhelming influence of severe fire weather, no long‐term reconstruction of mosaic dynamics has been performed from direct field evidence. In this study, we use fire length as a proxy for fire extent across the fire‐prone eastern Canadian taiga and systematically reconstruct the spatiotemporal variability of fire extent and fire intervals, as well as the resulting forest age along a 340‐km transect for the 1840–2013 time period. Our results indicate an extremely active fire regime over the last two centuries, with an overall burn rate of 2.1% of the land area yr −1 , mainly triggered by seasonal anomalies of high temperature and severe drought. However, the rejuvenation of the age mosaic was strongly patterned in space and time due to the intrinsically lower burn rates in wetland‐dominated areas and, more importantly, to the much‐reduced likelihood of burning of stands up to 50 years postfire. An extremely high burn rate of ~5% yr −1 would have characterized our study region during the last century in the absence of such fuel age effect. Although recent burn rates and fire sizes are within their range of variability of the last 175 years, a particularly severe weather event allowed a 2013 fire to spread across a large fire refuge, thus shifting the abundance of mature and old forest to a historic low. These results provide reference conditions to evaluate the significance and predict the spatiotemporal dynamics and impacts of the currently strengthening fire activity in the North American boreal forest. |
author2 |
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Hydro-Québec ArcticNet |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Erni, Sandy Arseneault, Dominique Parisien, Marc‐André Bégin, Yves |
spellingShingle |
Erni, Sandy Arseneault, Dominique Parisien, Marc‐André Bégin, Yves Spatial and temporal dimensions of fire activity in the fire‐prone eastern Canadian taiga |
author_facet |
Erni, Sandy Arseneault, Dominique Parisien, Marc‐André Bégin, Yves |
author_sort |
Erni, Sandy |
title |
Spatial and temporal dimensions of fire activity in the fire‐prone eastern Canadian taiga |
title_short |
Spatial and temporal dimensions of fire activity in the fire‐prone eastern Canadian taiga |
title_full |
Spatial and temporal dimensions of fire activity in the fire‐prone eastern Canadian taiga |
title_fullStr |
Spatial and temporal dimensions of fire activity in the fire‐prone eastern Canadian taiga |
title_full_unstemmed |
Spatial and temporal dimensions of fire activity in the fire‐prone eastern Canadian taiga |
title_sort |
spatial and temporal dimensions of fire activity in the fire‐prone eastern canadian taiga |
publisher |
Wiley |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13461 https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fgcb.13461 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/gcb.13461 |
genre |
taiga |
genre_facet |
taiga |
op_source |
Global Change Biology volume 23, issue 3, page 1152-1166 ISSN 1354-1013 1365-2486 |
op_rights |
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.13461 |
container_title |
Global Change Biology |
container_volume |
23 |
container_issue |
3 |
container_start_page |
1152 |
op_container_end_page |
1166 |
_version_ |
1802650589008494592 |