Recent changes in the fire regime across the North American boreal region—Spatial and temporal patterns of burning across Canada and Alaska

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Editor's Highlight Read Full Article (file size: 340548 bytes) Cited by GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L09703, doi:10.1029/2006GL025677, 2006 Recent changes in the fire regime across the North American boreal region—Spatial and temporal patterns of burning across Canada and Alaska Eric S. Kasischke Department of Geography, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA Merritt R. Turetsky Department of Plant Biology and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA Abstract We used historic records from 1959–99 to explore fire regime characteristics at ecozone scales across the entire North American boreal region (NABR). Shifts in the NABR fire regime between the 1960s/70s and the 1980s/90s were characterized by a doubling of annual burned area and more than a doubling of the frequency of larger fire years because of more large fire events (>1,000 km²). The proportion of total burned area from human-ignited fires decreased over this same time period, while the proportion of burning during the early and late- growing-seasons increased. Trends in increased burned area were consistent across the NABR ecozones, though the western ecozones experienced greater increases in larger fire years compared to the eastern ecozones. Seasonal patterns of burning differed among ecozones. Along with the climate warming, changes in the fire regime characteristics may be an important driver of future ecosystem processes in the NABR. Received 16 January 2005; accepted 29 March 2006; published 3 May 2006. Index Terms: 0429 Biogeosciences: Climate dynamics (1620); 0426 Biogeosciences: Biosphere/atmosphere interactions (0315); 0468 Biogeosciences: Natural hazards. Read Full Article (file size: 340548 bytes) Cited by Citation: Kasischke, E. S., and M. R. Turetsky (2006), Recent changes in the fire regime across the North American boreal region—Spatial and temporal patterns of burning across Canada and Alaska, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L09703, doi:10.1029/2006GL025677. Copyright 2006 by the American Geophysical Union.

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