FireIce 🔥❄  Fire in the land of ice: climatic drivers & feedbacks

A consolidator project funded by the ERC, 2021-2026

2019 was the largest fire year since at least 1997 within the Arctic Circle, largely driven by Siberian fires. The arctic-boreal region stores about two atmospheres worth of soil carbon with 90 % currently locked in permafrost soils, or perennially frozen ground. Fire releases parts of this carbon stock, which may induce a vigorous climate warming feedback.

FireIce will investigate feedbacks between climate warming and arctic-boreal fires by studying direct and longer-term carbon emissions from fires. FireIce will acquire highly needed observations of carbon emissions from Siberian forest and tundra fires. On top of the direct fire emissions, fires accelerate permafrost degradation, which leads to greenhouse gas emissions for several decades. Their sum may be substantially larger than the direct emissions, yet is largely unknown. In addition, FireIce will investigate the relative contribution of CH4 from smoldering fires to fire emissions. CH4 emissions represent a small, yet not well known, fraction of carbon emissions from fires, but CH4 is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

FireIce will investigate feedbacks between climate warming and arctic-boreal fires by studying controls on fire size and ignition. Fire growth can be limited because of fuel or fire weather limitations. The fire weather control is sensitive to warming, which may lead to larger future fires. Lightning ignition is the main source of burned area in arctic-boreal regions, and more lightning is expected in the future. By combining contemporary controls on fire size and ignition, and future predictions of climate and lightning, FireIce will assess the vulnerability of arctic-boreal permafrost and soil carbon to increases in fire.

FireIce’s results will be relevant to evidence-based policy. FireIce’s innovations are conceptual, i.e. unstudied aspects of an emerging warming feedback loop, methodological, e.g. inclusion of novel spaceborne data, and geographical, i.e. a focus on Siberia.

Read our blogs from our field expedition in the burned Alaskan tundra in 2023

Fires pushing trees North

A Vidi project funded by NWO and affiliated with NASA ABoVE, 2018-2023

The vast arctic-boreal region stores about 35% of the world’s soil carbon. Climate warming is occurring more rapidly in these northern high latitudes than in the rest of the world. These warmer temperatures are causing the number of wildfires to rise. These fires release large amounts of terrestrial carbon into the atmosphere. After tundra fires, freshly exposed mineral soils may be susceptible to tree colonization. This alters surface heating patterns: darker forests absorb more heat than brighter tundra. This may further amplify high-latitude warming.

Much of what we know about these dynamics is based on research carried out in arctic-boreal North America, even though the surface area of arctic-boreal Eurasia is about twice as large. The knowledge gained from North America may not be transferable to Eurasia regions because ecosystems and fire regimes are fundamentally different between the two continents; stand-replacing high-intensity fires dominate in North America compared to lower intensity surface fires in Eurasia.

This project will sample carbon fluxes from fires and post-fire tree colonization around two field sites in Siberia. These rare field observations will be analyzed in combination with similar data collected in North America from NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE). I will combine these sets of field data with remote sensing and climate datasets. This will result in a new circumpolar geospatial database of carbon emissions from all arctic-boreal fires since 2001. I will assess also continental-scale, including differences between continents, ecosystem shifts driven by fires and their effect on the carbon balance and climate.

The overarching objective of this project is quantify and understand the role of fire in high-latitude climate feedback loops. Our results are relevant to the process which provides evidence-based policy for governments.

Read our blog series Fire Expedition Siberia 2019

FireScapes: towards an interdisciplinary understanding of wildfire risk mitigation in the Dutch landscape

A seed money project funded by the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute, 2021-2022

Over the last year, the number of wildfires has increased dramatically in the Netherlands and they are expected to increase further. This increase can be attributed to both climate change and changes in the use and management of the land. Researchers and fire practitioners plead for measures to prevent the spreading of fires over large nature areas, for example by developing vegetation buffers of low flammability between highly flammable areas. Like the wildfires themselves, these measures could have a great impact on the (historical) landscapes and the ecological, cultural and political values they constitute. 

There are some important knowledge gaps that hamper the design of appropriate and effective prevention methods of wildfires in the Netherlands. While some measures exist, they may not be suitable for the Dutch landscape. Secondly, the current increase as well as prevention and mitigation of wildfires are the result of complex human-nature interactions. The design of appropriate measures therefore requires transdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge production.

In this project, we want to map this knowledge gap on the relationship between wildfires, wildfire risk reduction and mitigation measures and the ecological, cultural and political values of the Dutch landscape. We will conduct a pilot study of the Veluwe and connect with land managers and policy makers in the area. Finally, we aim to integrate the project within their different bachelor and master teaching programmes.