Estimated Daily Carbon Emissions from Boreal Forest Fires for Siberia and Canada

摘要

Boreal forests comprise 1/3rd of global forested area and are the largest terrestrial carbon store. Forest fires are the regions most dynamic disturbance factor, and these fires represent a globally important release of terrestrial C to the atmosphere. Critical to estimating both direct and longer-term fire-related perturbations to boreal C storage is knowledge of fire extent, intensity and/or type. In this paper we combine daily burned area and spaceborne Fire Radiative Power (FRP is the rate of radiative energy release by a fire over all wavelengths), for two large areas in Asian Russia and North America, for the years 2003 to 2007. Both parameters are determined using satellite data from the Terra/Aqua-MODIS sensors - the mid-infrared for the FRP and a combination of several channels for the burnt area detection. The results will then be used to estimate the pyrogenic C release, using a current state-of-the-art carbon accounting scheme.