Forested peatlands and changing fire regimes: implications for peat resources and fire management

盖C。加拿大1.7亿公顷的陆地面积和这些广泛的泥炭储量使加拿大成为世界上工业泥炭资源开采，使用和出口的领导者之一。 然而，北方泥炭地可能会变得越来越容易受到野火的影响，因为气候变化降低了地下水位，使更深的泥炭地暴露在燃烧中。最近在加拿大西部的研究表明，火灾活动已经在泥炭地碳循环和区域火灾排放中发挥了重要作用。然而，仍然存在不确定性，加拿大北部地区的泥炭地是否容易燃烧，以及是否更大的地表土壤水分赤字预测这一地区的气候变化将增加泥炭火灾的频率和/或严重程度。如果火灾活动增加，灭火成本可能会大幅上升（加拿大每年平均花费5亿美元用于直接灭火成本）。此外，火灾管理机构在成功和失败之间的差距很小，在温暖的气候下，不成比例的火灾可能会逃脱最初的攻击，导致燃烧面积的增加远远大于火灾天气严重程度的相应增加。 泥炭火灾目前是火灾管理的问题，作为主导泥炭资源燃烧的阴燃消费的发生和持续时间知之甚少。泥炭地的脆弱性和野火的生态后果的额外信息是至关重要的泥炭资源和火灾管理社区。我们将为泥炭地火灾开发新的定量火灾危险和阴燃潜力模型，以指导环境政策。我们还将研究几个生态过程（泥炭积累，水平衡，生物多样性），在这些重要的生态系统生态系统健康的敏感指标。鉴于深层泥炭层的阴燃会消耗消防资源，并可能对生态系统和人类健康产生负面影响，这些预测工具的开发将有助于火灾和泥炭资源管理的决策工具，未来可能会导致在与火灾排放有关的危险空气质量之前发出公共卫生警告。

Peatlands cover c. 170 million hectares of Canada's land surface and these extensive peat reserves make Canada one of the world's leaders in industrial peat resource extraction, use and export.   However, northern peatlands are likely to become increasingly vulnerable to wildfire as climate change lowers water tables and exposes deeper peat to burning. Recent research in western Canada has shown that fire activity already plays an important role in peatland carbon cycling and regional fire emissions. Yet there continues to be uncertainty as to whether peatlands across Canada's boreal zone are vulnerable to burning, and whether the greater surface soil moisture deficits predicted for this region with climate change will increase the frequency and/or severity of peat fires. If fire activity increases, fire suppression costs likely will rise dramatically (Canada spends an average of $500 million a year on direct suppression costs). Additionally, fire management agencies operate with a narrow margin between success and failure, a disproportionate number of fires may escape initial attack under a warmer climate, resulting in an increase in area burned much greater than the corresponding increase in fire weather severity.  Peat fires currently are problematic for fire management, as the occurrence and duration of smouldering consumption that dominates the burning of the peat resource is poorly understood. Additional information on peatland vulnerability and ecological consequences to wildfire is critical to both the peat resource and fire management communities. We will develop new quantitative fire danger and smoldering potential models for peatland fires that will guide environmental policy. We also will examine several ecological processes (peat accumulation, water balance, biodiversity) that are sensitive indicators of ecosystem health in these important ecosystems. Given that the smouldering of deep peat layers serves as a draw-down on firefighting resources and is likely to involve negative ecosystem and human health consequences, the development of these predictive tools will aid as a decision tool for fire and peat resource management and in the future could lead to public health warnings in advance of dangerous air quality linked to fire emissions.