Widespread Burning of Alaskan Boreal Forests Overcomes Fuel Limitation in the 21st Century

Abstract:

Fire is a key determinant of the structure and function of boreal forest ecosystems. Boreal fire regimes have been climate-limited in recent decades, and future climate warming is predicted to drive a pronounced increase in fire activity, likely resulting in carbon release from the boreal biome and positive feedback to climate change. Fuel limitation could slow fire regime change by reducing the abundance of mature vegetation on the landscape, but this mechanism remains poorly quantified and is thus excluded from forecasts of future boreal burning. We developed a novel statistical model that links regional area burned to mean landscape age, a proxy for fuel limitation due to cumulative past burning. Fit to historical fire observations from interior Alaska, the model detects significant evidence of fire-vegetation feedback and provides the first quantitative estimate of its effects on regional fire regimes. These effects were subtle during the past 60 yr, but they will become increasingly influential as climate warming promotes higher fire activity. By the end of the 21^st century, fuel limitation reduces predicted area burned by 40-50% relative to predictions based on climate alone, and diminishes the difference between fire regimes expected under alternate future climate scenarios. Nevertheless, annual area burned will approximately double during the coming century as fire becomes more widespread in spite of regional fuel limitation. Furthermore, changes to the fire regime and mean landscape age by the end of the century could represent a fundamental shift in the Alaskan boreal ecosystem. Our model structure facilitates linking fire regime predictions to ecosystem and Earth system models and could help reduce uncertainty in these models due to poorly constrained initial conditions. We demonstrate this approach using the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model, which has been calibrated extensively for applications in simulating boreal carbon dynamics. Results suggest that increased burning has already initiated a transition from sink to source of atmospheric carbon that will persist in interior Alaska throughout the 21^st century.