Abstract
Research into pyrogenic carbon emissions in the temperate belt of the Russian Federation has traditionally focused on the impact of forest fires. Nevertheless, ecosystems in which wildfires also make a significant contribution to anthropogenic CO2 emissions are poorly studied. We evaluated the carbon emissions of fires in the non-forest ecosystems of the Middle Amur Lowland, in the Khabarovsk Territory of the Russian Federation. Our study is based on long-term Earth remote sensing data of medium spatial resolution (Landsat 5, 7, and 8) and expeditionary studies (2018–2021). The assessment of carbon directly emitted from wildfires in meadow and meadow–mire temperate ecosystems in the Middle Amur lowland shows that specific emissions from such ecosystems vary, from 1.09 t/ha in dwarf shrub–sphagnum and sphagnum–ledum and sedge–reed fens to 6.01 t/ha in reed–forb, forb, reed, and sedge meadows. Meanwhile, carbon emissions specifically from fires in meadow and meadow–mire ecosystems are less significant—often an order of magnitude less than carbon emissions from forest fires (which reach 37 tC/ha). However, due to their high frequency and the large areas of land burned annually, the total carbon emissions from such fires are comparable to annual emissions from fires in forested areas. The results obtained show that the inadequacy of the methods used in the automatic mapping of burns leads to a significant underestimation of the area of grassland fires and carbon emissions from non-forest fires.
Highlights
The dynamics of how the geosphere is transforming under the influence of human activity is a priority research area [1–3]
Processing long-term series of Earth remote sensing data for the Middle Amur Lowland (MAL) site allowed us to identify areas burned by fires in spring and autumn during
The total area impacted by fires during this period amounted to more than 38 mln ha—938% of the total land area in the Middle Amur Lowland (Table 3)
Summary
The dynamics of how the geosphere is transforming under the influence of human activity is a priority research area [1–3]. Climatic change studies are of particular importance [2–4], including those investigating wildfires’ contribution to greenhouse gas emissions [5–11]. Since the 1970s, researchers have considered this area of research to be significant [7,12], and since 1990, numerous studies have been published assessing the contribution of pyrogenic greenhouse gas emissions to total anthropogenic emissions [6,7,13–15]. Numerous works are likewise devoted to assessing the scale and impact of wildfires in the boreal zone of the Northern Hemisphere [10,19–21,28]; most authors focus primarily on forestry [10,14,19,20,29–31] and peat fires [32,33], as well as the consequences of agricultural burns in North America [34], Eastern Europe [34–37], and Asia [38]. In the last decade, many works have appeared on fires in non-forest areas—the steppe and forest–steppe areas of the European part of Russia and the south of Western Siberia, and the steppes of the arid continental part of Eastern Siberia [39].
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