2025/10/07 by Christopher Schulze, Oliver Sonnentag, Craig A. Emmerton +10 · 1 voice · 2 citations
Environmental Science · #Boreal #Carbon dioxide #Carbon sink #Coastal wetland ecosystem dynamics #Eddy covariance #Fire effects on ecosystems #Peat #Peatlands and Wetlands Ecology #Permafrost #Sink (geography) #Taiga #Thermokarst
paper · pdf · doi:10.1029/2025gl118344
published in Geophysical Research Letters 52(19) (American Geophysical Union)
openalex publication_date 2025/10/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Abstract The carbon (C) storage of boreal peatlands is threatened by an intensifying wildfire regime. Between 2019 and 2023 we used eddy covariance and surface closed chambers to monitor two permafrost peatlands in boreal western Canada that burned in 2019 and 2007. Deeper thaw, warmer soils, and slow vegetation recovery caused the 2019 Burn to be a net carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) source (+130 g C m −2 yr −1 ) for four years post‐fire, despite reduced soil respiration. The 2007 Burn was a sink (−11 g C m −2 yr −1 ) 13–15 years post‐fire, similar to undisturbed peatlands. We estimate that wildfire caused a loss (∼2.9 kg C m −2 ) from permafrost peatlands, with ∼1.7 kg C m −2 due to combustion and ∼1.2 kg C m −2 due to net CO 2 losses during post‐fire succession. This highlights the importance of the post‐fire CO 2 losses and emphasizes the vulnerability of permafrost peatland soil C to fire.