Wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands
Permafrost vulnerability to climate change may be underestimated unless effects of wildfire are considered. Here we assess impacts of wildfire on soil thermal regime and rate of thermokarst bog expansion resulting from complete permafrost thaw in western Canadian permafrost peatlands. Effects of wil...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6072743 2023-05-15T17:55:21+02:00 Wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands Gibson, Carolyn M. Chasmer, Laura E. Thompson, Dan K. Quinton, William L. Flannigan, Mike D. Olefeldt, David 2018-08-02 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6072743/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30072751 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05457-1 en eng Nature Publishing Group UK http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6072743/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30072751 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05457-1 © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. CC-BY Article Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05457-1 2018-08-12T00:26:54Z Permafrost vulnerability to climate change may be underestimated unless effects of wildfire are considered. Here we assess impacts of wildfire on soil thermal regime and rate of thermokarst bog expansion resulting from complete permafrost thaw in western Canadian permafrost peatlands. Effects of wildfire on permafrost peatlands last for 30 years and include a warmer and deeper active layer, and spatial expansion of continuously thawed soil layers (taliks). These impacts on the soil thermal regime are associated with a tripled rate of thermokarst bog expansion along permafrost edges. Our results suggest that wildfire is directly responsible for 2200 ± 1500 km2 (95% CI) of thermokarst bog development in the study region over the last 30 years, representing ~25% of all thermokarst bog expansion during this period. With increasing fire frequency under a warming climate, this study emphasizes the need to consider wildfires when projecting future circumpolar permafrost thaw. Text permafrost Thermokarst PubMed Central (PMC) Nature Communications 9 1 |
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Article Gibson, Carolyn M. Chasmer, Laura E. Thompson, Dan K. Quinton, William L. Flannigan, Mike D. Olefeldt, David Wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands |
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description |
Permafrost vulnerability to climate change may be underestimated unless effects of wildfire are considered. Here we assess impacts of wildfire on soil thermal regime and rate of thermokarst bog expansion resulting from complete permafrost thaw in western Canadian permafrost peatlands. Effects of wildfire on permafrost peatlands last for 30 years and include a warmer and deeper active layer, and spatial expansion of continuously thawed soil layers (taliks). These impacts on the soil thermal regime are associated with a tripled rate of thermokarst bog expansion along permafrost edges. Our results suggest that wildfire is directly responsible for 2200 ± 1500 km2 (95% CI) of thermokarst bog development in the study region over the last 30 years, representing ~25% of all thermokarst bog expansion during this period. With increasing fire frequency under a warming climate, this study emphasizes the need to consider wildfires when projecting future circumpolar permafrost thaw. |
format |
Text |
author |
Gibson, Carolyn M. Chasmer, Laura E. Thompson, Dan K. Quinton, William L. Flannigan, Mike D. Olefeldt, David |
author_facet |
Gibson, Carolyn M. Chasmer, Laura E. Thompson, Dan K. Quinton, William L. Flannigan, Mike D. Olefeldt, David |
author_sort |
Gibson, Carolyn M. |
title |
Wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands |
title_short |
Wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands |
title_full |
Wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands |
title_fullStr |
Wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands |
title_full_unstemmed |
Wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands |
title_sort |
wildfire as a major driver of recent permafrost thaw in boreal peatlands |
publisher |
Nature Publishing Group UK |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6072743/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30072751 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05457-1 |
genre |
permafrost Thermokarst |
genre_facet |
permafrost Thermokarst |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6072743/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30072751 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05457-1 |
op_rights |
© The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05457-1 |
container_title |
Nature Communications |
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9 |
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1 |
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1766163274129211392 |