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| Titel |
Measuring the effect of fuel treatments on forest carbon using landscape risk analysis |
| VerfasserIn |
A. A. Ager, M. A. Finney, A. McMahan, J. Cathcart |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
1561-8633
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Natural Hazards and Earth System Science ; 10, no. 12 ; Nr. 10, no. 12 (2010-12-07), S.2515-2526 |
| Datensatznummer |
250008531
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/nhess-10-2515-2010.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Wildfire simulation modelling was used to examine whether fuel reduction
treatments can potentially reduce future wildfire emissions and provide
carbon benefits. In contrast to previous reports, the current study modelled
landscape scale effects of fuel treatments on fire spread and intensity, and
used a probabilistic framework to quantify wildfire effects on carbon pools
to account for stochastic wildfire occurrence. The study area was a
68 474 ha watershed located on the Fremont-Winema National Forest in
southeastern Oregon, USA. Fuel reduction treatments were simulated on 10% of
the watershed (19% of federal forestland). We simulated 30 000 wildfires
with random ignition locations under both treated and untreated landscapes to
estimate the change in burn probability by flame length class resulting from the
treatments. Carbon loss functions were then calculated with the Forest
Vegetation Simulator for each stand in the study area to quantify change in
carbon as a function of flame length. We then calculated the expected change
in carbon from a random ignition and wildfire as the sum of the product of
the carbon loss and the burn probabilities by flame length class. The
expected carbon difference between the non-treatment and treatment scenarios
was then calculated to quantify the effect of fuel treatments. Overall, the
results show that the carbon loss from implementing fuel reduction treatments
exceeded the expected carbon benefit associated with lowered burn
probabilities and reduced fire severity on the treated landscape. Thus, fuel
management activities resulted in an expected net loss of carbon immediately
after treatment. However, the findings represent a point in time estimate
(wildfire immediately after treatments), and a temporal analysis with a
probabilistic framework used here is needed to model carbon dynamics over the
life cycle of the fuel treatments. Of particular importance is the long-term
balance between emissions from the decay of dead trees killed by fire and
carbon sequestration by forest regeneration following wildfire. |
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