Quote of the Week - The effects may extend far beyond Canada and Alaska

Quote of the Week - The effects may extend far beyond Canada and Alaska, because of the frozen organic matter under the forest permafrost.  Wildfires can strip away the protective vegetative blanket and release all that stockpiled carbon into the atmosphere, says Merritt Turetsky, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario.  The thawing soil could also trigger microbial activity, releasing more carbon dioxide and methane.

In other words, more wildfires can mean more greenhouse gases, accelerating the very climate change that may have helped kick off the fires in the first place — not to mention changing the equation for rest of the globe.

“This is carbon that the ecosystem has not seen for thousands of years and now it’s being released into the atmosphere,” says Turetsky.  “We need to start thinking about permafrost and we need to start thinking about deep carbon and everything we can do to inhibit the progression of climate change.”

Canada’s huge wildfires may release carbon locked in permafrost by Aviva Rutkin, New Scientist, May 6, 2016

Read original article at 2016 SkS Weekly Digest #19