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Into the unknown: The role of post‐fire soil erosion in the carbon cycle
,
Diana Vieira ,
Stefan Doerr ,
Panos Panagos ,
Cristina Santin Nuno
Global Change Biology, Volume: 30, Issue: 6
Swansea University Authors:
Stefan Doerr , Cristina Santin Nuno
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© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
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DOI (Published version): 10.1111/gcb.17354
Abstract
Wildfires directly emit 2.1 Pg carbon (C) to the atmosphere annually. The net effect of wildfires on the C cycle, however, involves many interacting source and sink processes beyond these emissions from combustion. Among those, the role of post-fire enhanced soil organic carbon (SOC) erosion as a C...
| Published in: | Global Change Biology |
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| ISSN: | 1354-1013 1365-2486 |
| Published: |
Wiley
2024
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| Online Access: |
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa66706 |
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| Abstract: |
Wildfires directly emit 2.1 Pg carbon (C) to the atmosphere annually. The net effect of wildfires on the C cycle, however, involves many interacting source and sink processes beyond these emissions from combustion. Among those, the role of post-fire enhanced soil organic carbon (SOC) erosion as a C sink mechanism remains essentially unquantified. Wildfires can greatly enhance soil erosion due to the loss of protective vegetation cover and changes to soil structure and wettability. Post-fire SOC erosion acts as a C sink when off-site burial and stabilization of C eroded after a fire, together with the on-site recovery of SOC content, exceed the C losses during its post-fire transport. Here we synthesize published data on post-fire SOC erosion and evaluate its overall potential to act as longer-term C sink. To explore its quantitative importance, we also model its magnitude at continental scale using the 2017 wildfire season in Europe. Our estimations show that the C sink ability of SOC water erosion during the first post-fire year could account for around 13% of the C emissions produced by wildland fires. This indicates that post-fire SOC erosion is a quantitatively important process in the overall C balance of fires and highlights the need for more field data to further validate this initial assessment. |
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| Keywords: |
carbon sequestration, prescribed fires, pyrogenic carbon, soil organic carbon, wildfires |
| College: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering |
| Funders: |
Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación,y Universidades/Agencia Estatal deInvestigación, Grant/Award Number:RYC2021-031262-I; Consejo Superior deInvestigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Grant/Award Number: 20208AT007; EuropeanUnion, through NextGenerationEU/PRTRfunds; Grant/Award Number: RYC2021-031262-I; Natural Environment ResearchCouncil, Grant/Award Number: UK-FDRS(NE/T003553/1); Horizon 2020 FrameworkProgramme, Grant/Award Number:101003890 |
| Issue: |
6 |