Woodwell Climate Research Center, Falmouth, MA, United States of America; Centre for Landscape and Climate Research, School of Geography, Geology and Environment, University of Leicester, University Road, LE1 7RH, United Kingdom.
Department of Biosciences, University of Durham, Upper Mountjoy, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom; College of Wildlife and Protected Area, Northeast Forestry University, 26 Hexing Road, Harbin 150040, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Jul 20;831:154885. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154885. Epub 2022 Mar 28.
Climate change has driven an increase in the frequency and severity of fires in Eurasian boreal forests. A growing number of field studies have linked the change in fire regime to post-fire recruitment failure and permanent forest loss. In this study we used four burned area and two forest loss datasets to calculate the landscape-scale fire return interval (FRI) and associated risk of permanent forest loss. We then used machine learning to predict how the FRI will change under a high emissions scenario (SSP3-7.0) by the end of the century. We found that there are currently 133,000 km forest at high, or extreme, risk of fire-induced forest loss, with a further 3 M km at risk by the end of the century. This has the potential to degrade or destroy some of the largest remaining intact forests in the world, negatively impact the health and economic wellbeing of people living in the region, as well as accelerate global climate change.
气候变化导致了欧亚大陆北方森林火灾的频率和严重程度增加。越来越多的实地研究将火灾发生规律的变化与火灾后繁殖失败和永久性森林损失联系起来。在这项研究中，我们使用了四个火烧面积数据集和两个森林损失数据集来计算景观尺度的火灾重现间隔（FRI）和永久森林损失的相关风险。然后，我们使用机器学习来预测在本世纪末高排放情景（SSP3-7.0）下 FRI 将如何变化。我们发现，目前有 13.3 万公里的森林处于火灾导致森林损失的高风险或极高风险之中，到本世纪末，还有 300 万公里的森林面临风险。这有可能破坏或摧毁世界上一些最大的剩余完整森林，对生活在该地区的人们的健康和经济福祉产生负面影响，并加速全球气候变化。
