Earth Equity News

Wildfires Gain Ground on Alaskan Tundra. By Scott Canon, McClatchy Newspapers, July 18, 2008. "The Arctic is burning. It long has, of course, but now with greater regularity and more ferocity... Around... remote... [Dimple Lake] deep in the Arctic Circle, the ground is a singed sponge dotted with charred clumps of tussock grass... The fire that incinerated the land from July into September last year is the largest ever recorded on Alaskan tundra. It cleared a swath of 400 square miles... [and] followed a pair of forest fires earlier in the decade that had ranked one and three on the list of largest on record in the state... Will more fires beget a warmer world?... 'More of the sun's energy is heating up the soil,' [said Adrian Rocha of the Marine Biological Laboratory]. Just 3% of the light that strikes this ash-black ground is reflected back, compared with 18% on leafier, unburned ground. Soil temperatures run 3.6 to 5.4 degrees hotter. And the ground thaw runs about 10 inches deeper... Even though the Arctic covers less than a sixth of the planet's land mass, it holds about one-third of the planet's stored carbon, in part because of the slow rate of decomposition in the previously frozen north. With more of that soil taken out of the permafrost, the dirt is awakened to the activity of microbes that could release greater levels of [CO2]... If the research going on here now finds that happening, the increase in Arctic fires could set in motion... positive feedback: greenhouse gases making for a hotter, drier Arctic that burns more often and kicks up even more greenhouse gases."