RAPID: Effects of changing wildfire regimes on soil carbon fluxes during and following fire

RAPID：改变野火状况对火灾期间和火灾后土壤碳通量的影响

• 批准号: 2420420
• 负责人: Thea Whitman
• 金额: $ 19.99万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-06-01 至 2025-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2420420&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Effects; changing; wildfire; regimes

The soil of northern forests holds massive reservoirs of carbon (C). This carbon is at risk of being lost to the atmosphere and contributing to climate change, due to recent patterns of wildfire that are also related to climate change. Determining how wildfires affect C stored in the soil is difficult, because it is rare that researchers know where a wildfire will take place before it happens, so there are not often measurements of C content from before the wildfire. In addition to assessing how much C is lost to the atmosphere when organic matter is combusted during a wildfire, fires can change how the remaining soil C is transformed, as remaining organic matter decomposes and returns C to the atmosphere. For this RAPID project, the extensive wildfire season in Canada in 2023 offers this team a unique chance to measure fire-induced soil C losses at their previously studied sites and to compare the size of C emissions derived from combustion during the fire vs. decomposition afterwards. In this project, the researchers will test pre-fire samples and return to to obtain and test post-fire samples in order to determine how fires affected carbon cycling. This research offers a critical opportunity to leverage rare pre-fire data to investigate pressing questions about wildfire effects on soil C content in a globally-relevant ecosystem. The findings will inform understanding of post-wildfire ecology and interactions between fire severity and C cycling. In addition, junior researchers will be trained, and the project team will develop new outreach materials to engage the public on the topic of fires and soils.As part of sampling campaigns in 2019 and 2022 in Wood Buffalo National Park (WBNP), AB and NWT, Canada, and the surrounding region, the research group collected a large number of soil samples from sites that had not experienced fire for at least 30 years. They characterized pre-burn soil C and N concentrations, pH, microbial community composition, and respiration (decomposition). The 2023 WBNP fire complex burned 32 out of 70 of the previously sampled sites, representing a range of soil types, including organic-rich peatlands and sandy acidic soils, and dominant tree species. In this project, researchers are pairing post-burn sampling with the existing pre-burn samples to answer two questions: (1) How does fire severity relate to post-burn soil C decomposition rates? (2) How does the relative importance of C losses due to combustion vs. changes in C decomposition rates change over time with increasing fire severity? At each site, researchers will estimate C losses due to wildfire, collect soil cores and quantify soil C, and measure potential decomposition using soil incubations. They will use simple biogeochemical models to extrapolate potential net C losses through decomposition, to quantify the relative magnitude of these two major C loss pathways – direct losses through combustion vs. changes in C decomposition rates after the wildfires. Further leveraging this dataset, researchers will collect and preserve subsamples of soil for future efforts to characterize microbial community composition. These samples will be compared with pre-burn (and lab-burned) microbial communities from previous sampling campaigns – another opportunity to take advantage of these unusual pre-fire datasets. Samples will also be preserved for further chemical characterization supported by future proposals, in order to explore the potential role that organic matter chemistry plays in determining post-fire soil C decomposition rates. The research project will provide training for a graduate student, undergraduate field assistants, and a research technician, as well as enhance wildfire and climate change public education.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

北部森林的土壤蕴藏着大量的碳(C)。由于最近的野火模式也与气候变化有关，这些碳有可能流失到大气中，并导致气候变化。很难确定野火如何影响土壤中储存的碳，因为研究人员很少在野火发生之前就知道它会发生在哪里，所以通常不会测量野火发生前的碳含量。除了评估当有机物在野火中燃烧时有多少碳流失到大气中，火灾还可以改变剩余土壤C的转化方式，因为剩余的有机物质分解并将C返回大气。对于这个快速项目，2023年加拿大大规模的野火季节为该团队提供了一个独特的机会，来测量他们之前研究过的地点因火灾导致的土壤碳损失，并比较火灾期间燃烧产生的碳排放与火灾后分解产生的碳排放的大小。在这个项目中，研究人员将测试火灾前的样本，并返回以获取和测试火灾后的样本，以确定火灾如何影响碳循环。这项研究提供了一个关键机会，可以利用罕见的火灾前数据来调查有关野火对全球相关生态系统中土壤碳含量的影响的紧迫问题。这些发现将有助于理解野火后的生态以及火灾严重程度和C自行车之间的相互作用。此外，初级研究人员将接受培训，项目团队将开发新的外展材料，让公众参与到火灾和土壤的主题中来。作为2019年和2022年在加拿大AB和NWT的伍德布法罗国家公园(WBNP)和周围地区进行抽样活动的一部分，研究小组从至少30年没有经历过火灾的地点收集了大量土壤样本。它们表征了燃烧前土壤的C和N浓度、pH、微生物群落组成和呼吸(分解)。2023年WBNP火灾综合体烧毁了之前采样的70个地点中的32个，代表了一系列土壤类型，包括富含有机物质的泥炭地和沙质酸性土壤，以及优势树种。在这个项目中，研究人员将燃烧后的样本与现有的燃烧前样本配对，以回答两个问题：(1)火灾严重程度如何与燃烧后土壤碳分解率相关？(2)燃烧造成的碳损失与C分解率变化的相对重要性如何随着火灾严重程度的增加而随时间变化？在每个地点，研究人员将估计野火造成的碳损失，收集土壤岩心并量化土壤碳，并使用土壤培养来测量潜在的分解。他们将使用简单的生物地球化学模型来推断通过分解的潜在净碳损失，以量化这两条主要碳损失途径的相对大小-燃烧直接损失与野火后碳分解率的变化。进一步利用这一数据集，研究人员将收集和保存土壤的亚样本，以供未来确定微生物群落组成的特征。这些样本将与之前采样活动中的燃烧前(和实验室燃烧)微生物群落进行比较--这是利用这些不同寻常的火灾前数据集的另一个机会。还将保存样品，以供未来提案支持的进一步化学表征，以探索有机质化学在确定火灾后土壤C分解速率方面所发挥的潜在作用。该研究项目将培训一名研究生、本科生现场助理和一名研究技术人员，并加强野火和气候变化公共教育。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。