Ítem
Acceso Abierto
Forest fire size amplifies postfire land surface warming
Título de la revista
Autores
Zhao, Jie
Yue, Chao
Wang, Jiaming
Hantson, Stijn
Wang, Xianli
He, Binbin
Li, Guangyao
Wang, Liang
Zhao, Hongfei
Luyssaert, Sebastiaan
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Fecha
2024-09-26
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Editor
Nature
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Resumen
Climate warming has caused a widespread increase in extreme fire weather, making forest fires longer-lived and larger1–3. The average forest fire size in Canada, the USA and Australia has doubled or even tripled in recent decades4,5. In return, forest fires feed back to climate by modulating land–atmospheric carbon, nitrogen, aerosol, energy and water fluxes6–8. However, the surface climate impacts of increasingly large fires and their implications for land management remain to be established. Here we use satellite observations to show that in temperate and boreal forests in the Northern Hemisphere, fire size persistently amplified decade-long postfire land surface warming in summer per unit burnt area. Both warming and its amplification with fire size were found to diminish with an increasing abundance of broadleaf trees, consistent with their lower fire vulnerability compared with coniferous species9,10. Fire-size-enhanced warming may affect the success and composition of postfire stand regeneration11,12 as well as permafrost degradation13, presenting previously overlooked, additional feedback effects to future climate and fire dynamics. Given the projected increase in fire size in northern forests14,15, climate-smart forestry should aim to mitigate the climate risks of large fires, possibly by increasing the share of broadleaf trees, where appropriate, and avoiding active pyrophytes.
Abstract
Palabras clave
Fire ecology , Climate change
