Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta fire: vegetation biomass, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Alaska, 2016

The summer of 2015 was an extraordinary year for fire in the Arctic, including in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, presaging a future where tundra and boreal fire is far more common. Remarkably, the area burned in the YK Delta in 2015 exceeds the total area burned from 1940-2014 combined. The response of...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Susan Natali
Format: Dataset
Language:unknown
Published: Arctic Data Center 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.18739/A2M61BQ2Q
id dataone:doi:10.18739/A2M61BQ2Q
record_format openpolar
spelling dataone:doi:10.18739/A2M61BQ2Q 2024-06-03T18:46:32+00:00 Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta fire: vegetation biomass, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Alaska, 2016 Susan Natali These data are from the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta, Alaska, approximately halfway between Bethel and St. Mary's. The area is flat with numerous lakes and wetlands. Terrestrial landscapes are peat plateaus roughly 1-3 meters above wetlands, stream, and lakes. All of these samples are from the peat plateaus. ENVELOPE(-163.3736,-162.3953,61.3053,61.1861) BEGINDATE: 2016-06-09T00:00:00Z ENDDATE: 2016-06-23T00:00:00Z 2018-01-18T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.18739/A2M61BQ2Q unknown Arctic Data Center Subarctic fire vegetation tundra Dataset 2018 dataone:urn:node:ARCTIC https://doi.org/10.18739/A2M61BQ2Q 2024-06-03T18:16:09Z The summer of 2015 was an extraordinary year for fire in the Arctic, including in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, presaging a future where tundra and boreal fire is far more common. Remarkably, the area burned in the YK Delta in 2015 exceeds the total area burned from 1940-2014 combined. The response of the YK Delta in the first year post-fire will set the stage for longer-term changes in delta carbon storage and transport among tundra, aquatic and marine systems, and to the atmosphere. Quantifying carbon export and understanding the immediate ecosystem response to fire is critical because long-term recovery is, to a considerable degree, dependent on short-term responses. A major question that this research will address is how fire influences the amount and form of carbon transported from delta ecosystems seasonally and in the first year following fire. Ultimately, these results will inform long-term trajectories of the vulnerability and fate of delta carbon pools. This research will significantly improve our understanding of the role of fire in the loss of both modern and ancient carbon from arctic river deltas, which contain >10% of the Arctic’s massive permafrost carbon store. Arctic river deltas are hotspots for carbon storage, occupying <1% of the pan-Arctic watershed but containing >10% of carbon stored in arctic permafrost. They are also heterogeneous mosaics of linked terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and are susceptible to changes in land, river, and marine systems. The vulnerability of carbon stored in arctic river deltas is a major unknown and is critically important as climate warming and increasing fire frequency may make this carbon vulnerable to transport to aquatic and marine systems and to the atmosphere. The goal of this proposal is to examine the immediate effects of fire on carbon storage in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and exchange between terrestrial and aquatic components of the Delta. By extension this work will yield critical insights into how the carbon balance of deltas in the arctic system will change over the coming decades as warming continues and fire frequency increases. This dataset includes vegetation harvested the summer 1 year after the fires. Vegetation was sorted to species or functional group, dried and weighed for biomass. Dataset Arctic Kuskokwim Peat permafrost Subarctic Tundra Alaska Yukon Arctic Data Center (via DataONE) Arctic Yukon ENVELOPE(-163.3736,-162.3953,61.3053,61.1861)
institution Open Polar
collection Arctic Data Center (via DataONE)
op_collection_id dataone:urn:node:ARCTIC
language unknown
topic Subarctic
fire
vegetation
tundra
spellingShingle Subarctic
fire
vegetation
tundra
Susan Natali
Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta fire: vegetation biomass, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Alaska, 2016
topic_facet Subarctic
fire
vegetation
tundra
description The summer of 2015 was an extraordinary year for fire in the Arctic, including in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, presaging a future where tundra and boreal fire is far more common. Remarkably, the area burned in the YK Delta in 2015 exceeds the total area burned from 1940-2014 combined. The response of the YK Delta in the first year post-fire will set the stage for longer-term changes in delta carbon storage and transport among tundra, aquatic and marine systems, and to the atmosphere. Quantifying carbon export and understanding the immediate ecosystem response to fire is critical because long-term recovery is, to a considerable degree, dependent on short-term responses. A major question that this research will address is how fire influences the amount and form of carbon transported from delta ecosystems seasonally and in the first year following fire. Ultimately, these results will inform long-term trajectories of the vulnerability and fate of delta carbon pools. This research will significantly improve our understanding of the role of fire in the loss of both modern and ancient carbon from arctic river deltas, which contain >10% of the Arctic’s massive permafrost carbon store. Arctic river deltas are hotspots for carbon storage, occupying <1% of the pan-Arctic watershed but containing >10% of carbon stored in arctic permafrost. They are also heterogeneous mosaics of linked terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and are susceptible to changes in land, river, and marine systems. The vulnerability of carbon stored in arctic river deltas is a major unknown and is critically important as climate warming and increasing fire frequency may make this carbon vulnerable to transport to aquatic and marine systems and to the atmosphere. The goal of this proposal is to examine the immediate effects of fire on carbon storage in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and exchange between terrestrial and aquatic components of the Delta. By extension this work will yield critical insights into how the carbon balance of deltas in the arctic system will change over the coming decades as warming continues and fire frequency increases. This dataset includes vegetation harvested the summer 1 year after the fires. Vegetation was sorted to species or functional group, dried and weighed for biomass.
format Dataset
author Susan Natali
author_facet Susan Natali
author_sort Susan Natali
title Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta fire: vegetation biomass, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Alaska, 2016
title_short Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta fire: vegetation biomass, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Alaska, 2016
title_full Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta fire: vegetation biomass, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Alaska, 2016
title_fullStr Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta fire: vegetation biomass, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Alaska, 2016
title_full_unstemmed Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta fire: vegetation biomass, Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Alaska, 2016
title_sort yukon-kuskokwim delta fire: vegetation biomass, yukon-kuskokwim delta alaska, 2016
publisher Arctic Data Center
publishDate 2018
url https://doi.org/10.18739/A2M61BQ2Q
op_coverage These data are from the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta, Alaska, approximately halfway between Bethel and St. Mary's. The area is flat with numerous lakes and wetlands. Terrestrial landscapes are peat plateaus roughly 1-3 meters above wetlands, stream, and lakes. All of these samples are from the peat plateaus.
ENVELOPE(-163.3736,-162.3953,61.3053,61.1861)
BEGINDATE: 2016-06-09T00:00:00Z ENDDATE: 2016-06-23T00:00:00Z
long_lat ENVELOPE(-163.3736,-162.3953,61.3053,61.1861)
geographic Arctic
Yukon
geographic_facet Arctic
Yukon
genre Arctic
Kuskokwim
Peat
permafrost
Subarctic
Tundra
Alaska
Yukon
genre_facet Arctic
Kuskokwim
Peat
permafrost
Subarctic
Tundra
Alaska
Yukon
op_doi https://doi.org/10.18739/A2M61BQ2Q
_version_ 1800867347233243136