We propose a thorough investigation into the net radiative forcings from forest fires in the above domain. Fire is the dominant disturbance in boreal north america and strongly regulates ecosystem…

This is a $741,804 cooperative agreement awarded by NASA's Shared Services Center to the Woodwell Climate Research Center, a non-profit research organization that specializes in climate science and ecosystem modeling. The contract aims to develop a spatially-explicit understanding of the climate forcings from forest fires in the boreal regions of North America. Through field measurements, remote sensing, and earth system modeling, the research will quantify the warming and cooling effects of fire-related impacts such as carbon emissions, changes in land surface albedo, and deposition of black carbon on snow and ice. The findings will inform management frameworks to leverage the climate mitigation potential of fire regimes in boreal forests. This contract has no set-aside designation, and Woodwell has experience as both a prime contractor and subcontractor on federal climate research grants, including prior awards from NASA and the National Science Foundation.

We propose a thorough investigation into the net radiative forcings from forest fires in the above domain. Fire is the dominant disturbance in boreal north america and strongly regulates ecosystem composition and land atmosphere exchanges of carbon, water, and energy. Multiple lines of evidence point to an intensification of the fire regime due to climate change; these disturbances, in turn, influence climate through multiple and often counteracting pathways. For example, fires that combust large amounts of organic matter and deposit black carbon on ICE and snow will warm the climate, whereas fires that dramatically increase spring albedo by exposing more underlying snow will lead to cooling. The vulnerability and resilience of other boreal and arctic systems, including permafrost and sea ICE, depends in part on how fire regimes interact with climate. Unlike other large earth system feedbacks, we have some direct level of control over fire regimes. Federal and state, or provincial agencies, in alaska and canada invest considerable resources into controlling fires for multiple purposes. The warming or cooling potential from fires, however, is currently not taken into account. We believe this represents a significant untapped climate mitigation service from boreal forests. While many of these agencies are keenly interested, the information needed to exploit this ecosystem service is entirely lacking. The value of this information will only increase in time as carbon and climate forcings become monetized and more tightly regulated. Our primary science goal will be to develop maps of fire forcings across the above domain during the 2002 through 2011 ERA. To do so we will employ existing and new remote sensing datasets to quantify carbon consumption by wildfire and long term changes to spring albedo, which has been shown to be the dominant biophysical forcing from fires in alaska and canada. New field measurements of combustion from under sampled forest and burning types will add critical constraints to our combustion model. We will employ a state of the art land surface and earth system model to characterize: 1. Post fire biomass regrowth as IT is affected by spatiallyvarying drivers, and, 2. Forcings from carbonaceous aerosols including their subsequent deposition onto snow and ICE. These data layers will allow US to not only improve our understanding of the climate impacts from fires, but to include these impacts into new management frameworks. To facilitate the latter, we will develop a set of predictive models of potential fire forcings that evolve over the fire season and can be integrated into current decision making tools. Fundamental to this effort will be continued bilateral communication with managers. We will work closely with stakeholders from various agencies in alaska and canada to understand their needs and relay the importance and practicality of our research. Results from this first phase will form the foundation for further development in phase II of above, including future projections of fire feedbacks and the development and refinement of operational fire management tools. We have assembled an interdisciplinary team that includes extensive expertise in fire related field measurements, optical and infrared remote sensing, statistical combustion modeling, earth system modeling, and fire management. We aim to improve our understanding of climate disturbance interactions in the above domain, but perhaps more importantly develop a framework for utilizing the climate mitigation service that fires either create or degrade. A holistic understanding of fire related ecosystem services is critical for the increasingly complex management of northern forests and the societal benefits they provide.