PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 24: Disturbance Ecology: Management; Response to Fire
Monday, August 8, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 516 D, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Modelling Canadian boreal forest wildfires: A case study.
Hua, Dong*,1, 2, Peng, Changhui1, Dang, Qing-Lai 2, Zhou, Xiaolu 1, 2, Sun, Jianfeng1, 1 ECO-MCS Lab, Montréal, Quebec, Canada2 Faculty of Forestry and the Forest Environment, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada
ABSTRACT- Wildfire is the dominant disturbance agent in most of the Canadian boreal forests and affects the landscape pattern, succession, regeneration, regional biodiversity and biogeochemical cycling of the forests. Fires burn an average of two million ha of Canadian boreal forests per year over the past four decades and release a significant amount of carbon into the atmosphere through direct combustion, decomposition of fire-killed vegetation, and a temporary decrease in the carbon sequestration capacity. Based on the developments and progress of modelling Canadian boreal forest wildfires, a semi-empirical model of wildfire at stand level has been developed as an extension of a tree growth and carbon dynamic model, TRIPLEX. Dead and live fuel accumulations estimated in the TRIPLEX model together with daily weather data, fuel moisture, fuel temperature, soil moisture, and soil temperature, are used to estimating fire occurrence probability, potential fire intensity, potential fire severity, fire-induced tree mortality, and carbon/nitrogen emissions. The fire model is therefore functionalized in three parts: fire occurrence, fire development, and fire effects. The North Study Area (NSA) and South Study Area (SSA) of the BOREAS Project were chosen in this study. There were significant wildfire activities in the SSA during summers of 1977, 1989, and 1995. There was a large fire in the NSA in the summer of 1981. They have been used as fire sample cases in this study. Daily weather data from the flux towers, the gridded 1961-90 climate normals data at 10 km resolution, and the Canadian Forest Inventory data were input to the TRIPLEX fire model. Fire occurrence probability, fire process, and fire effects were estimated using the model. The agreements between the predictions of the model and real situations indicate that the TRIPLEX fire model may be practical and applicable to other boreal forest regions.
Key words: Wildfire modelling, tree growth and carbon dynamic model, Fire effects, Fire-induced carbon/nitrogen emissions