Quantifying immediate carbon emissions from El Nino-mediated wildfires in humid tropical forests.

ABSTRACT: Wildfires produce substantial CO₂ emissions in the humid tropics during El Niño-mediated extreme droughts, and these emissions are expected to increase in coming decades. Immediate carbon emissions from uncontrolled wildfires in human-modified tropical forests can be considerable owing to high necromass fuel loads. Yet, data on necromass combustion during wildfires are severely lacking. Here, we evaluated necromass carbon stocks before and after the 2015-2016 El Niño in Amazonian forests distributed along a gradient of prior human disturbance. We then used Landsat-derived burn scars to extrapolate regional immediate wildfire CO₂ emissions during the 2015-2016 El Niño. Before the El Niño, necromass stocks varied significantly with respect to prior disturbance and were

SUBMITTER: Withey K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6178445 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature