Identification

Title

Prescribed fire as a means of reducing forest carbon emissions in the Western United States

Abstract

Carbon sequestration by forested ecosystems offers a potential climate change mitigation benefit. However, wildfire has the potential to reverse this benefit. In the western United States, climate change and land management practices have led to increases in wildfire intensity and size. One potential means of reducing carbon emissions from wildfire is the use of prescribed burning, which consumes less biomass and therefore releases less carbon to the atmosphere. This study uses a regional fire emissions model to estimate the potential reduction in fire emissions when prescribed burning is applied in dry, temperate forested systems of the western U.S. Daily carbon dioxide (CO₂) fire emissions for 2001−2008 were calculated for the western U.S. for two cases: a default wildfire case and one in which prescribed burning was applied. Wide-scale prescribed fire application can reduce CO₂ fire emissions for the western U.S. by 18−25% in the western U.S., and by as much as 60% in specific forest systems. Although this work does not address important considerations such as the feasibility of implementing wide-scale prescribed fire management or the cumulative emissions from repeated prescribed burning, it does provide constraints on potential carbon emission reductions when prescribed burning is used.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7sn0bhp

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2010-02-11T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

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This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Environmental Science and Technology, copyright 2010 American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es902455e

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact