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Research article2025Peer reviewedOpen access

Wildfires offset the increasing but spatially heterogeneous Arctic-boreal CO2 uptake

Virkkala, Anna-Maria; Rogers, Brendan M.; Watts, Jennifer D.; Arndt, Kyle A.; Potter, Stefano; Wargowsky, Isabel; Schuur, Edward A. G.; See, Craig R.; Mauritz, Marguerite; Boike, Julia; Bret-Harte, M. Syndonia; Burke, Eleanor J.; Burrell, Arden; Chae, Namyi; Chatterjee, Abhishek; Chevallier, Frederic; Christensen, Torben R.; Commane, Roisin; Dolman, Han; Edgar, Colin W.;
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Abstract

The Arctic-Boreal Zone is rapidly warming, impacting its large soil carbon stocks. Here we use a new compilation of terrestrial ecosystem CO2 fluxes, geospatial datasets and random forest models to show that although the Arctic-Boreal Zone was overall an increasing terrestrial CO2 sink from 2001 to 2020 (mean +/- standard deviation in net ecosystem exchange, -548 +/- 140 Tg C yr(-1); trend, -14 Tg C yr(-1); P < 0.001), more than 30% of the region was a net CO2 source. Tundra regions may have already started to function on average as CO2 sources, demonstrating a shift in carbon dynamics. When fire emissions are factored in, the increasing Arctic-Boreal Zone sink is no longer statistically significant (budget, -319 +/- 140 Tg C yr(-1); trend, -9 Tg C yr(-1)), and the permafrost region becomes CO2 neutral (budget, -24 +/- 123 Tg C yr(-1); trend, -3 Tg C yr(-1)), underscoring the importance of fire in this region.

Published in

Nature Climate Change
2025
Publisher: NATURE PORTFOLIO

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences

Publication identifier

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02234-5

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/140494