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GLOBAL BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLES,
VOL. 18,
GB4014,
doi:10.1029/2004GB002222,
2004
Historical burn area in western Canadian peatlands and its relationship to fire weather indices
M. R. Turetsky
Northern Forestry Centre, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
B. D. Amiro
Northern Forestry Centre, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
E. Bosch
Northern Forestry Centre, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
J. S. Bhatti
Northern Forestry Centre, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Abstract
Peatlands store the majority of soil carbon in many northern regions, yet their vulnerability to fire remains poorly understood.
We used large-scale mapping of fire and peatland distributions to explore patterns of burning at two spatial scales. On a
landscape scale in central Alberta, we used spatially explicit distributions of peatlands and 50 years of fire perimeter maps
to determine whether uplands burn more preferentially than peatlands. Burn area and ignition localities in central Alberta
did not occur preferentially in uplands relative to bogs and fens. Extrapolating this result at a regional scale, we used
the Peatlands of Canada database and 20 years of historical fire records to estimate annual burn areas for Alberta, British
Columbia, Northwest Territories, and Saskatchewan peatlands. Peatland burn areas varied tremendously over time, with high
fire activity in the early 1980s and mid-1990s. On average, fires impacted 1850 km2 of peatland annually across this region of western Canada. Positive relationships between the area of peatland burned and
weather variables calculated for each fire event using the Canadian Fire Weather Index, including maximum air temperatures
and the duff moisture code, suggest that drier and/or warmer conditions likely would increase the burning of peatlands in
western Canada.
Received 14
January
2004;
accepted 21
July
2004;
published 5
November
2004.
Keywords: fire;
peatlands;
wetlands;
boreal;
carbon;
climate change.
Index Terms: 1615 Global Change: Biogeochemical processes (4805); 1620 Global Change: Climate dynamics (3309); 1640 Global Change: Remote sensing; 1890 Hydrology: Wetlands.
Read Full Article (file size: 477081 bytes) Cited by
Citation: Turetsky, M. R., B. D. Amiro, E. Bosch, and J. S. Bhatti
(2004),
Historical burn area in western Canadian peatlands and its relationship to fire weather indices,
Global Biogeochem. Cycles,
18,
GB4014,
doi:10.1029/2004GB002222.
Copyright 2004 by the American Geophysical Union.
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