Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
Published online 9 October 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2007.154
News in Brief
Alaskan fire damages permafrost
Ecologists plan investigation of massive tundra wildfire.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Please note this is News in Brief, and so will be a short article.
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
This would seem to be yet another potential source of positive feedback in the climate system. Warming creates tundra fires, which release CO2, which causes more warming. This also has the potential to counter the effects discussed in "The disappearance of relict permafrost in boreal north America: Effects on peatland carbon storage and fluxes" by M. R. TURETSKY et al in Global Change Biology 9/2007.