Project Title: Wildfire effects on tundra landscapes and lake change

Collaborators on this Project Project Lead - Paul Mann Data Science Lead - Matthew Bonnema Abdou Bah Banafsheh Khakipoor
Clem Miege Connor Mullen Raksha Roy Zahra Sharif

The Problem

Rapid Arctic climate change is expected to increase tundra fire frequency, intensity and extent over upcoming decades. Wildfires are one of the most critical disturbances across Arctic tundra regions as they contribute to thawing of frozen (permafrost) ground, vegetation and landscape change, and ancient carbon release. Arctic wildfires abruptly perturb regional carbon cycling modifying the micro-topography of the landscape, altering local hydrology and patterns of evaporation.

Lake surface areas reflect the balance between rates of surface inflow, groundwater discharge, and precipitation falling directly onto a lake, with rates of water loss though surface outflow, groundwater recharge, and evaporation/evapotranspiration from the lake surface and surrounding landscape (Anderson et al. 2013). Here, we examine if wildfire causes long-lasting changes to landscape structure and/or patterns of lake change.

Application Example

The summer of 2015 was an extraordinary year for fire in the Arctic, including in the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K Delta) Alaska, presaging a future where tundra and boreal fire is far more common. The area burned in the YK Delta in 2015 exceeded the total area burned across the region from 1940-2014 combined.

Sample Data

TBD.

Specific Objectives/Questions:

TBD.

Proposed Methods/Tools: Google Earth Engine Python

Background Reading: Anderson, L., J. Birks, J. Rover, and N. Guldager (2013), Controls on recent Alaskan lake changes identified from water isotopes and remote sensing, Geophysical Research Letters, 40(13), 3413–3418, doi:10.1002/grl.50672.