Indirect effects of wildfire (severity) on carbon fluxes and budgets

FIRE-C-BUDs

From 09/2016 to 08/2019

Principal Investigator: Jan Jacob Keizer
Staff: Thomas Foken

The overarching aim is to address the current knowledge gap on forest carbon fluxes and budgets immediately after wildfire, by combining 4 complementary methodologies and adding 2 novel components compared to prior studies (plant-level photosynthesis and carbon exports by overland flow). Based on the literature review 6 hypotheses have been defined to guide the proposed research activities. In a nutshell, they address the 3 following topics: (i) direct and indirect effects of two contrasting fire severities (low vs. high) on vegetation, ash, litter and soil carbon pools; (ii) indirect effects of fire severity on carbon exports by overland flow and instantaneous rates of soil respiration and photosynthesis, and their evolution with time-since-fire; (iii) evolution, at the high-severity burnt site (worst-case scenario), of net ecosystem exchange and total ecosystem respiration with time-since-fire and its link with the temporal patterns in point-scale soil effluxes and net carbon assimilation rates.

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