Massive wildfires are occurring more frequently in Alaska over the past couple of decades, and the increased rate has caused a major concern for many environmental experts, who believe that the resulting burned material could add to the worsening effects of carbon emissions in the air.
The main front of the fire in Fish Creek located in Interior Alaska was already put out more than a week ago, but several other areas continue to be consumed by hundreds of smaller fires still burning in the state. Experts believe the fires were started by a lightning storm that occurred last month.Such wildfires, even on a smaller scale, could create a significant impact on the environment as well as on the surrounding ecosystem, not only in Alaska but also in different parts of the world.
U.S. Forest Service (USFS) research ecologist Teresa Hollingsworth said that the Fish Creek Fire was a "different kind of fire." While the fire is mostly finished burning the brush and trees above the ground, it has now proceeded to burn the organic material found below ground. Hollingsworth said that these organic materials go several meters deep underground. Hollingsworth explained that what makes wildfires in areas located in higher latitudes, such as Alaska, is that it is not finished with burning only the vegetation on the surface.
The layers of organic matter, known as duff, is typically composed of fallen pine needles, trees and grasses that have accumulated on the floor of the forest over time. The frigid temperatures has caused these matter to decompose more slowly compared to those found in warmer areas such as in Florida.Just below the duff there is another layer called permafrost, which is a collection of rocks, dirt, water, twigs, trees and mammoth bones all frozen in the ground.
Hollingsworth said that these layers of organic matter comprise a large biomass of carbon, the same material that causes adverse effects on the world's climate. This carbon biomass is what many climatologists and ecologists are monitoring during the fire season of this year.
They estimate that around 4.7 million acres of boreal lands and forests in Alaska have burned up in this summer alone, and millions of acres more that were scorched in Canada, where experts believe half of the land features a layer of permafrost underground.
Subarctic fires are not a new occurrence as a large majority of land affected by wildfires in North America each year is in Canada and Alaska. However, the number of fires observed this season are significantly higher than average, with many of them burning at a high intensity.
Ted Schurr, an ecologist at the University of Northern Arizona, said that unusually high rate of wildfires this year is very alarming. "It's understood that there's about twice as much frozen carbon [in permafrost] as there is in the atmosphere, to the tune of about 1,700 billion tons of carbon stored frozen," Schurr said. Schurr explained that there is potentially another 2,000 billion tons' worth of carbon found in the soil and vegetation across the world.
He added that the Arctic and the boreal areas of the world are a hotspot of carbon materials that are deposited in the biosphere. These carbon stores could very well end up in the Earth's atmosphere as the effects of climate change continue. One of the fastest ways for the world's ecosystem or climate to change is through fire.
Scientists have long debated what could possibly happen to the world if the carbon deposit in the Earth's permafrost were to be released. While some believe that the ecosystem will be able to offset the new carbon by producing new plant life, others are not so optimistic. Merritt Turetsky, an ecologist at Canada's University of Guelph, said that the sudden release of high levels of carbon from permafrost could trigger further changes to the climate that could be far worse than the emissions made by humans. She said that this could result in warmer temperatures and more wildfires, which could then lead to further loses in the permafrost.
Photo: The National Guard | Flickr
