International Research Fellowship Program: Fire Management and Carbon Storage in Spain and the U.S.

国际研究奖学金计划使美国科学家和工程师能够在国外进行三到二十四个月的研究。该计划的奖项提供了联合研究的机会，并利用国外独特或互补的设施、专业知识和实验条件。该奖项将支持Jason Kaye博士为期6个月的研究奖学金，与Ramon Vallejo博士在西班牙巴伦西亚的环境与地中海环境中心(CEAM)合作36个月。该项目的目标是量化火灾和火灾管理对西班牙东部和美国西南部碳储存的影响。这两个地区都有干燥的森林，在人类管理之前(几千年前在西班牙，一个世纪前在美国)，干旱的森林支持了频繁的火灾。当代灭火有利于树木的建立、碳的储存和燃料的积累。在西班牙，这些积累的燃料最终会以替代燃料的方式燃烧，将植物材料转化为大气中的二氧化碳。在美国，灭火更有效，大多数森林已经一个世纪没有燃烧过了。因此，这些区域包含有关基于火灾的二氧化碳排放的补充信息。西班牙的生态系统提供了森林在经历多次森林火灾后释放的二氧化碳的信息。当火被持续扑灭时，美国的生态系统提供了有关森林中储存的二氧化碳的信息。为了测量西班牙东部森林替代火灾后的碳积累，PI将定位过去不同时间被烧毁的森林，并测量每个生态系统的碳总量。碳积累的速度可以从每一片森林的年龄和含碳量计算出来。为了测量美国灭火后的碳积累，PI将使用过去森林密度和质量的树轮重建。树木年轮代表着可转化为碳储存的树木大小的年度纪录。这项研究的主要结果将是描述火灾扑灭和林分替代火灾后干燥森林中碳积累的方程。这些方程式将被迅速纳入全球碳模型。瓦列霍在这一地区研究火已经有25年了。他正在与欧盟的研究人员进行项目，这将使他能够与国际碳和火灾科学家进行互动。瓦列霍博士已经建立了非常适合上述碳采样的研究网站。

0202514KayeThe International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support a six-month research fellowship by Dr. Jason Kaye to work with Dr. Ramon Vallejo at the Centro de Estudios Ambientales del Mediterraneo (CEAM) in Valencia, Spain over a period of 36 months.The objective of this project is to quantify the effects of fire and fire management on carbon storage in eastern Spain and the southwestern United States. Both of these regions contain dry forests that supported frequent fires prior to human management (millennia ago in Spain, a century ago in the U.S.). Contemporary fire suppression facilitates tree establishment, carbon storage, and fuel accumulation. In Spain, this accumulated fuel eventually burns in stand-replacing fires that convert plant material to atmospheric CO2. In the U.S., fire suppression is more effective and most forests have not burned for a century. Thus, these regions contain complementary information regarding fire-based CO2 emissions. The Spanish ecosystems provide information on CO2 released from forests experiencing repeated stand-replacing fires. The U.S. ecosystems provide information on CO2 stored in forests when fire is persistently suppressed. To measure carbon accumulation following stand-replacing fires in eastern Spain, the PI will locate forests that have burned at different times in the past and measure the total amount of carbon in each ecosystem. The rate of carbon accumulation can be calculated from the age and carbon content of each forest. To measure carbon accumulation following fire suppression in the U.S., the PI will use tree-ring reconstructions of past forest density and mass. Tree-rings represent an annual record of tree size that can be converted into carbon storage. The main results from this research will be equations describing the accumulation of carbon in dry forests following fire suppression and stand replacing fires. These equations will rapidly be incorporated into global carbon models.Dr. Vallejo has been studying fire in this region for 25 years. He has on-going projects with researchers in the European Union, which will enable interactions with international carbon and fire scientists. Dr. Vallejo has already established research sites that are ideally suited for the carbon sampling outlined above.