Boreal forest fire in Canada

Experimental forest fire in the remote NorthWest Territories of Canada. The NWT Government provides forest plots for experimental fires used to examine fire behaviour and the effectiveness of fire prevention, suppression and safety measures. We use these fires to determine the carbon balance of wildfires. Fires emit carbon, but this is normally sequestered by the regrowing vegetation. In addition recurring fire and regrowth cycles can act as carbon sink due to the longevity of the charcoal they produce. An outcome from such a fire was the following publication: Santín, C., Doerr, S.H., Preston C. & González-Rodríguez, G. (2015) Pyrogenic organic matter production from wildfires: a missing sink in the global carbon cycle. Global Change Biology, 21, 1621-1633.