Faculty Publications

Document Type

Article

Publication Version

Published Version

Keywords

Boreal forest, Evenki, Permafrost, Smoldering fires, Subarctic, Zombie fires

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Land

Volume

11

Issue

3

Abstract

Wildfires in permafrost areas, including smoldering fires (e.g., “zombie fires”), have increasingly become a concern in the Arctic and subarctic. Their detection is difficult and requires ground truthing. Local and Indigenous knowledge are becoming useful sources of information that could guide future research and wildfire management. This paper focuses on permafrost peatland fires in the Siberian subarctic taiga linked to local communities and their infrastructure. It presents the results of field studies in Evenki and old-settler communities of Tokma and Khanda in the Irkutsk region of Russia in conjunction with concurrent remote sensing data analysis. The study areas located in the discontinuous permafrost zone allow examination of the dynamics of wildfires in permafrost peatlands and adjacent forested areas. Interviews revealed an unusual prevalence and witness-observed characteristics of smoldering peatland fires over permafrost, such as longer than expected fire risk periods, impacts on community infrastructure, changes in migration of wild animals, and an increasing number of smoldering wildfires including overwintering “zombie fires” in the last five years. The analysis of concurrent satellite remote sensing data confirmed observations from communities, but demonstrated a limited capacity of satellite imagery to accurately capture changing wildfire activity in permafrost peatlands, which may have significant implications for global climate.

Department

Department of Geography

Original Publication Date

3-1-2022

Object Description

1 PDF file

DOI of published version

10.3390/land11030322

Repository

UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa

Copyright

©2022 The Authors. Creative Commons Attribution License.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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