More severe and frequent fires in the Alaskan boreal forest are releasing vast stores of carbon and nitrogen from burned trees and soil into the atmosphere, a trend that could accelerate climate warming. But new research published this week in the journal Science shows that the deciduous trees replacing burned spruce forests more than make up for that loss, storing more carbon and accumulating it four times faster over a 100-year fire interval. The study, led by a team of researchers at the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University, suggests that these faster-growing, less flammable deciduous forests may act as a stabilizing ‘firebreak’ against escalating fire patterns and nutrient loss in the region.
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Source: Phys.org