Data from "Into the unknown: The role of post-fire soil erosion in the carbon cycle"

  1. Girona-García, Antonio 1
  2. Vieira, Diana 2
  3. Doerr, Stefan 3
  4. Panagos, Panos 2
  5. Santín, Cristina 1
  1. 1 Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
    info

    Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

    Madrid, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02gfc7t72

  2. 2 Joint Research Centre
    info

    Joint Research Centre

    Bruselas, Bélgica

  3. 3 Swansea University
    info

    Swansea University

    Swansea, Reino Unido

    ROR https://ror.org/053fq8t95

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Editor: Zenodo

Year of publication: 2024

Type: Dataset

CC BY 4.0

DOI: 10.5281/ZENODO.11207872 lock_openOpen access editor

Abstract

Wildfires directly emit 2.1 Pg carbon (C) to the atmosphere annually. The net effect of wildfires on the C cycle, however, involves many interacting source and sink processes beyond these emissions from combustion. Among those, the role of post-fire enhanced soil organic carbon (SOC) erosion as a C sink mechanism remains essentially unquantified. Wildfires can greatly enhance soil erosion due to the loss of protective vegetation cover and changes to soil structure and wettability. Post-fire SOC erosion acts as a C sink when off-site burial and stabilization of C eroded after a fire, together with the on-site recovery of SOC content, exceed the C losses during its post-fire transport. Here we synthesize published data on post-fire SOC erosion and evaluate its overall potential to act as longer-term C sink. To explore its quantitative importance, we also model its magnitude at continental scale using the 2017 wildfire season in Europe. Our estimations show that the C sink ability of SOC water erosion during the first post-fire year could account for around 13% of the C emissions produced by wildland fires. This indicates that post-fire SOC erosion is a quantitatively important process in the overall C balance of fires, and highlights the need for more field data to further validate this initial assessment. Here we provide the post-fire SOC erosion dataset ("Post-fire SOC erosion rates" file) used for calculating the SOC ratio of eroded sediments implemented in the RUSLE modelling; as well as the list of data sources ("List of data sources" file).

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