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Alaska’s changing fire regime — implications for the vulnerability of its boreal forests

Eric S. Kasischke,a David L. Verbyla,b T. Scott Rupp,b A. David McGuire,c Karen A. Murphy,d Randi Jandt,e Jennifer L. Barnes,f Elizabeth E. Hoy,a Paul A. Duffy,b Monika Calef,g Merritt R. Turetskyh

aDepartment of Geography, 2181 LeFrak Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

bDepartment of Forest Sciences, School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7200, USA.

cUS Geological Survey, Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775, USA.

dNational Wildlife Refuge System, Anchorage, AK 99503, USA.

eAlaska Fire Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fort Wainwright, AK 99703, USA.

fUS National Park Service, Fairbanks, Alaska 99709, USA.

gDepartment of Geography and Planning, SUNY Albany, Albany, NY 12222, USA.

hDepartment of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada.

Corresponding author

Published on the web 28 June 2010.

Received August 26, 2009. Accepted February 16, 2010.

This article is one of a selection of papers from The Dynamics of Change in Alaska’s Boreal Forests: Resilience and Vulnerability in Response to Climate Warming.

Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 2010, 40(7): 1313-1324, 10.1139/X10-098

Abstract

A synthesis was carried out to examine Alaska’s boreal forest fire regime. During the 2000s, an average of 767 000 ha·year–1 burned, 50% higher than in any previous decade since the 1940s. Over the past 60 years, there was a decrease in the number of lightning-ignited fires, an increase in extreme lightning-ignited fire events, an increase in human-ignited fires, and a decrease in the number of extreme human-ignited fire events. The fraction of area burned from human-ignited fires fell from 26% for the 1950s and 1960s to 5% for the 1990s and 2000s, a result from the change in fire policy that gave the highest suppression priorities to fire events that occurred near human settlements. The amount of area burned during late-season fires increased over the past two decades. Deeper burning of surface organic layers in black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP) forests occurred during late-growing-season fires and on more well-drained sites. These trends all point to black spruce forests becoming increasingly vulnerable to the combined changes of key characteristics of Alaska’s fire regime, except on poorly drained sites, which are resistant to deep burning. The implications of these fire regime changes to the vulnerability and resilience of Alaska’s boreal forests and land and fire management are discussed.

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