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Fire suppression and ecosystem carbon storage

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TLDR
A 35-year controlled burning experiment in Minnesota oak savanna showed that fire frequency had a great impact on ecosystem carbon (C) stores, with most carbon stored in woody biomass.
Abstract
A 35-year controlled burning experiment in Minnesota oak savanna showed that fire frequency had a great impact on ecosystem carbon (C) stores. Specifically, compared to the historical fire regime, fire suppression led to an average of 1.8 Mg·ha−1·yr−1 of C storage, with most carbon stored in woody biomass. Forest floor carbon stores were also significantly impacted by fire frequency, but there were no detectable effects of fire suppression on carbon in soil and fine roots combined, or in woody debris. Total ecosystem C stores averaged ∼110 Mg/ha in stands experiencing presettlement fire frequencies, but ∼220 Mg/ha in stands experiencing fire suppression. If comparable rates of C storage were to occur in other ecosystems in response to the current extent of fire suppression in the United States, fire suppression in the USA might account for 8–20% of missing global carbon.

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Simulated Importance of Dispersal, Disturbance, and Landscape History in Long-Term Ecosystem Change in the Big Woods of Minnesota

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Afforestation opportunities when stand productivity is driven by a high risk of natural disturbance: a review of the open lichen woodland in the eastern boreal forest of Canada

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Human impacts on 20th century fire dynamics and implications for global carbon and water trajectories

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References
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Book

Biogeochemistry : An Analysis of Global Change

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a perspective of the global cycle of nitrogen and phosphorous, the global water cycle, and the global sulfur cycle from a global point of view.
Journal ArticleDOI

Carbon pools and flux of global forest ecosystems.

TL;DR: Slowing deforestation, combined with an increase in forestation and other management measures to improve forest ecosystem productivity, could conserve or sequester significant quantities of carbon.
Journal ArticleDOI

Terrestrial ecosystems and the carbon cycle

TL;DR: The terrestrial biosphere plays an important role in the global carbon cycle as mentioned in this paper, which is the fluxes of carbon among four main reservoirs: fossil carbon, the atmosphere, the oceans, and the terrestrial Biosphere.
Journal ArticleDOI

Biogeochemistry, An Analysis of Global Change

TL;DR: The first edition of Schlesinger's Biogeochemistry in 1991 was an early entry in the field of Earth system science/global change, and has since gained sufficient popularity and demand to merit a second, extensively revised edition.
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The U.S. Carbon Budget: Contributions from Land-Use Change

TL;DR: The rates at which lands in the United States were cleared for agriculture, abandoned, harvested for wood, and burned were reconstructed from historical data for the period 1700-1990 and used in a terrestrial carbon model to calculate annual changes in the amount of carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems, including wood products.
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