Collaborative Research: The Past, Present, and Future of Boreal Fire Feedbacks

合作研究：北方火灾反馈的过去、现在和未来

• 批准号: 2215119
• 负责人: Chad Hoffman
• 金额: $ 42.49万
• 依托单位: Colorado State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-02-01 至 2027-01-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2215119&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Past; Present; Future

Boreal forests circle the globe and contain some of the largest carbon stocks on the planet. Locked in the trees and soil, this carbon is sequestered from the atmosphere. But as the climate warms, fires are becoming more and more common – and while wildfire is not unusual in the boreal, the increasing frequency of burning is surpassing what the forests have evolved to tolerate, leading to forest loss and permafrost thaw. We do not know what comes next. It is possible that if the forest fails to recover from high frequency fires, grasses and shrubs may take over, further increasing flammability. Or they may dampen future fire activity. This project takes a unique look at fires in the boreal, by investigating the deep history of fire through lake sediment cores where you can see the history of fire over thousands of years, through fieldwork to determine how resilient the landscape is now, and through high-performance computer models to estimate how fires will behave in the future. The project spans many timescales and pushes computing powers to the limit and will inform expectations of the future for this biome and the planet. The project will train graduate students, undergraduate students, and postdoctoral scholars, organize a two-day science communication workshop, and refine a fire teaching model used to teach high schoolers about carbon-vegetation-fire interactions. Using an integrative and dynamic approach, this project will combine existing and newly collected sediment data to explore the paleohistory of short interval fires in the boreal with co-located fieldwork in short-interval fire areas. Although it is known that modern fire frequency is passing historical norms, this project will go further, to determine if current short interval fires are creating novel structures. Those structures are the basis for fire behavior in the future, so the researchers will then combine those measurements with modern, physics-based fluid dynamics modeling of fire behavior that can simulate wind in close canopies and in novel forest structures Further, this model will be extended to incorporate soil effects, critical in the boreal. This is the only available way to explore the fire implications of truly novel species assemblages and structures that seem to be emerging. Together, this work will explore fire likelihood feedbacks and structural thresholds associated with fire behavior in the boreal forest and inform expectations about how the region will respond, in terms of wildfire and energy balance, to climate warming. The project will work with the non-profit COMPASS to organize a two-day science communication workshop for graduate students and scientists in the larger academic community. They will also work with Concord Consortium to develop a module tool for teaching highschoolers, working with teachers to solicit feedback.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

北方森林绕过地球，并在地球上包含一些最大的碳库存。该碳被锁在树木和土壤中，从大气中隔离。但是，随着气候变暖，火灾变得越来越普遍 - 虽然野火在北方地区并不罕见，但燃烧的频率越来越超过森林所发展的耐受性，导致森林损失和永久冻结。我们不知道接下来会发生什么。如果森林未能从高频火灾中恢复，草和灌木可能会接管，从而进一步提高了燃烧性。否则它们可能会抑制未来的火灾活动。该项目通过调查通过湖泊沉积物核心的火灾历史来探究北方地区的大火，在那里您可以通过现场工作看到了数千年的火灾历史，以确定景观现在的韧性，并通过高性能的计算机模型来估计未来的火灾将如何表现。该项目跨越了许多时间尺度，并将计算能力推向极限，并将告知对这个生物群落和地球的未来的期望。该项目将培训研究生，本科生和博士后学者，组织为期两天的科学传播研讨会，并完善用于教授高中生的消防教学模型。使用综合和动态方法，该项目将结合现有和新收集的沉积物数据，以探索北方短间隔火的古历史，并在短间隔火区中共同定位的野外作业。尽管众所周知，现代火灾频率正在通过历史规范，但该项目将进一步发展，以确定当前的短时间间隔火是否正在创造新的结构。这些结构是将来火灾行为的基础，因此研究人员将这些测量结果与现代物理基于物理的流体动力学建模相结合，可以模拟近距离檐篷中的风，并在新型的森林结构中进一步扩展该模型，以纳入该模型以融合水果效应，在鲍多利亚中至关重要。这是探索似乎正在出现的真正新型物种组合和结构的火灾含义的唯一可用方法。这项工作将共同探讨与北方森林中火灾行为相关的火灾可能性的反馈和结构阈值，并告知人们对该地区在野火和能量平衡方面的反应，以使气候变暖。该项目将与非营利性指南针合作，为较大的学术界的研究生和科学家组织为期两天的科学传播研讨会。他们还将与Concord联盟合作，开发一种教学工具来教授高中生，与教师合作以征求反馈。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并且我们是否使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响来审查标准。