Advancing the Understanding and Prediction of Peatland Wildfire Occurrence in the Boreal and Arctic

During the last decade, the Boreal and Arctic experienced several dry spells and heat waves that led to widespread wildfire occurrence over forests and peatlands. Peatlands play a critical role in wildfire occurrence in peatland-rich regions in general, because peatlands can disrupt the "fuel landscape" when wet, but connect fuels when dry. More peatland fires will exacerbate global warming due to the instantaneous release of ‘legacy soil carbon’ that accumulated over millennia, and aggravate other adversities for the environment and humankind, such as respiratory diseases with the inhalation of noxious smoke and costs of extensive firefighting.The PhD project includes works at the two critical factors causing large peatland fires in the boreal and arctic zone: cloud-to-ground lighting strikes as major ignition source and the presence of highly burnable fuel. Large data sets on wildfires and controlling factors (e.g. meteorology, vegetation, soil, multiple satellite observations and retrieval) will be created and analyzed by machine learning techniques. For the first time, crucial novel information about the subsurface fuel (peat) moisture conditions obtained from satellite data assimilation will be integrated into such data-driven fire models. Furthermore, a novel peatland-specific land surface model will be used for the first time in coupled land-atmosphere simulations to explain lightning frequency and the probability of a lightning ignition over peatland-rich regions. The objectives of this PhD project are- to reveal unique large-scale insights into links between peatland moisture and wildfires,- to improve fire danger rating systems used in fire management, and- to make predictions of future occurrence in the course of climate change.

Keywords:wildfires, land-atmosphere interaction, lightning, hydrology, peatlands, meteorology, climate change

Disciplines:Surface water hydrology, Meteorology, Remote sensing, Climate change

Project type:PhD project