Access

Letter

Nature 450, 89-92 (1 November 2007) | doi:10.1038/nature06272; Received 19 December 2006; Accepted 6 September 2007

Open Innovation Challenges

naturejobs

Fire as the dominant driver of central Canadian boreal forest carbon balance

Ben Bond-Lamberty1, Scott D. Peckham1, Douglas E. Ahl1 & Stith T. Gower1

  1. Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin, 1630 Linden Drive, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

Correspondence to: Ben Bond-Lamberty1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to B.B.-L. (Email: bpbond@wisc.edu).

Top

Changes in climate, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and fire regimes have been occurring for decades in the global boreal forest1, 2, 3, with future climate change likely to increase fire frequency4—the primary disturbance agent in most boreal forests3, 5. Previous attempts to assess quantitatively the effect of changing environmental conditions on the net boreal forest carbon balance have not taken into account the competition between different vegetation types on a large scale6, 7, 8, 9. Here we use a process model with three competing vascular and non-vascular vegetation types to examine the effects of climate, carbon dioxide concentrations and fire disturbance on net biome production, net primary production and vegetation dominance in 100 Mha of Canadian boreal forest. We find that the carbon balance of this region was driven by changes in fire disturbance from 1948 to 2005. Climate changes affected the variability, but not the mean, of the landscape carbon balance, with precipitation exerting a more significant effect than temperature. We show that more frequent and larger fires in the late twentieth century resulted in deciduous trees and mosses increasing production at the expense of coniferous trees. Our model did not however exhibit the increases in total forest net primary production that have been inferred from satellite data1, 10. We find that poor soil drainage decreased the variability of the landscape carbon balance, which suggests that increased climate and hydrological changes have the potential to affect disproportionately the carbon dynamics of these areas. Overall, we conclude that direct ecophysiological changes resulting from global climate change have not yet been felt in this large boreal region. Variations in the landscape carbon balance and vegetation dominance have so far been driven largely by increases in fire frequency.

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.

NEWS AND VIEWS

Fire damage soils our forests

Nature News and Views (28 Nov 1996)

Burning issues in fire control

Nature News and Views (05 Feb 1987)