As major wildfires increase in Canada’s North, boreal forests that have acted as carbon sinks for millennia are becoming sources of atmospheric carbon, potentially contributing to the greenhouse effect.
As major wildfires increase in Canada’s North, boreal forests that have acted as carbon sinks for millennia are becoming sources of atmospheric carbon, potentially contributing to the greenhouse effect.
That’s the conclusion of an international research team that involves University of Saskatchewan (USask) adjunct researcher Jill Johnstone and recent USask PhD graduate Xanthe Walker who is now a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University (NAU). The findings were published Aug. 21 in the prestigious journal Nature.
“This study underscores why more frequent burning in the boreal forest due to wildfires is bad from a climate perspective,” said Walker, lead author on the paper.
The research was launched in the aftermath of the severe 2014 fires in the Northwest Territories (N.W.T)—the largest fire season in the region’s recorded history. Funded by the N.W.T government and agencies such as NSERC and NASA, the project aims to better understand what happened to boreal forest soils during these fires, knowledge that could improve forest and fire management and help northerners plan and adapt.
Read more at University of Saskatchewan
