Disentangling the contribution of multiple land covers to fire‐mediated carbon emissions in Amazonia during the 2010 drought

In less than 15 years, the Amazon region experienced three major droughts. Links between droughts and fires have been demonstrated for the 1997/1998, 2005, and 2010 droughts. In 2010, emissions of 510 ± 120 Tg C were associated to fire alone in Amazonia. Existing approaches have, however, not yet disentangled the proportional contribution of multiple land cover sources to this total. We develop a novel integration of multisensor and multitemporal satellite‐derived data on land cover, active fires, and burned area and an empirical model of fire‐induced biomass loss to quantify the extent of burned areas and resulting biomass loss for multiple land covers in Mato Grosso (MT) state, southern Amazonia—the 2010 drought most impacted region. We show that 10.77% (96,855 km2) of MT burned. We estimated a gross carbon emission of 56.21 ± 22.5 Tg C from direct combustion of biomass, with an additional 29.4 ± 10 Tg C committed to be emitted in the following years due to dead wood decay. It is estimated that old‐growth forest fires in the whole Brazilian Legal Amazon (BLA) have contributed to 14.81 Tg of C (11.75 Tg C to 17.87 Tg C) emissions to the atmosphere during the 2010 fire season, with an affected area of 27,555 km2. Total C loss from the 2010 fires in MT state and old‐growth forest fires in the BLA represent, respectively, 77% (47% to 107%) and 86% (68.2% to 103%) of Brazil's National Plan on Climate Change annual target for Amazonia C emission reductions from deforestation.

[1]  D. Ruppert,et al.  Transformation and Weighting in Regression , 1988 .

[2]  D. Ward,et al.  Smoke emissions from wildland fires , 1991 .

[3]  Leonardo Sant,et al.  Um método de Classificação Não Supervisionada por Regiões , 1993 .

[4]  J. Boone Kauffman,et al.  Relationships of fire, biomass and nutrient dynamics along a vegetation gradient in the Brazilian Cerrado , 1994 .

[5]  N. Higuchi,et al.  Combustion completeness in a rainforest clearing experiment in Manaus, Brazil , 1998 .

[6]  Y. Shimabukuro.  Using shade fraction image segmentation to evaluate deforestation in Landsat Thematic Mapper images , 1998 .

[7]  P. Fearnside,et al.  Incêndios na Amazônia Brasileira: estimativa da emissão de gases do efeito estufa pela queima de diferentes ecossistemas de Roraima na passagem do evento “El Nino” (1997/98) , 1999 .

[8]  N. Higuchi,et al.  A tropical rainforest clearing experiment by biomass burning in the state of Pará, Brazil , 1999 .

[9]  N. Higuchi,et al.  Decomposition and carbon cycling of dead trees in tropical forests of the central Amazon , 2000, Oecologia.

[10]  D. Roy,et al.  Achieving sub-pixel geolocation accuracy in support of MODIS land science , 2002 .

[11]  J. Barlow,et al.  Large tree mortality and the decline of forest biomass following Amazonian wildfires. , 2002 .

[12]  R. Almeida-Filho,et al.  Digital processing of a Landsat-TM time series for mapping and monitoring degraded areas caused by independent gold miners, Roraima State, Brazilian Amazon , 2002 .

[13]  Margarita López Martínez,et al.  Unified equations for the slope, intercept, and standard errors of the best straight line , 2004 .

[14]  Ane Alencar,et al.  The economic cost of the use of fire in the Amazon , 2004 .

[15]  L. Anderson,et al.  Detecção de cicatrizes de áreas queimadas baseada no modelo linear de mistura espectral e imagens índice de vegetação utilizando dados multitemporais do sensor MODIS/TERRA no estado do Mato Grosso, Amazônia brasileira , 2005 .

[16]  J. Randerson,et al.  Global estimation of burned area using MODIS active fire observations , 2005 .

[17]  D. Nepstad,et al.  Forest Understory Fire in the Brazilian Amazon in ENSO and Non-ENSO Years: Area Burned and Committed Carbon Emissions , 2006 .

[18]  Y. Shimabukuro,et al.  Spatial patterns and fire response of recent Amazonian droughts , 2007 .

[19]  J. V. Soares,et al.  Distribution of aboveground live biomass in the Amazon basin , 2007 .

[20]  O. Phillips,et al.  Low stocks of coarse woody debris in a southwest Amazonian forest , 2007, Oecologia.

[21]  Atul K. Jain.  Global estimation of CO emissions using three sets of satellite data for burned area , 2007 .

[22]  D. Roy,et al.  The collection 5 MODIS burned area product — Global evaluation by comparison with the MODIS active fire product , 2008 .

[23]  J. Barlow,et al.  Fire-mediated dieback and compositional cascade in an Amazonian forest , 2008, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[24]  Tim E. Jupp,et al.  Increasing risk of Amazonian drought due to decreasing aerosol pollution , 2008 .

[25]  R. Betts,et al.  Climate Change, Deforestation, and the Fate of the Amazon , 2008, Science.

[26]  G. Alberti.  Climate change, deforestation and the fate of Amazon , 2008 .

[27]  J. Randerson,et al.  Estimates of fire emissions from an active deforestation region in the southern Amazon based on satellite data and biogeochemical modelling , 2008 .

[28]  D. Morton,et al.  Validation of GOES and MODIS active fire detection products using ASTER and ETM+ data , 2008 .

[29]  E. Chuvieco,et al.  Global burned-land estimation in Latin America using MODIS composite data. , 2008, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[30]  Yu Song,et al.  Comparison of L3JRC and MODIS global burned area products from 2000 to 2007 , 2009 .

[31]  Y. Shimabukuro,et al.  Fraction images derived from Terra Modis data for mapping burnt areas in Brazilian Amazonia , 2009 .

[32]  J. Marengo.  Long‐term trends and cycles in the hydrometeorology of the Amazon basin since the late 1920s , 2009 .

[33]  Luiz E. O. C. Aragão,et al.  Regional and seasonal patterns of litterfall in tropical South America , 2009 .

[34]  J. Randerson,et al.  Global fire emissions and the contribution of deforestation, savanna, forest, agricultural, and peat fires (1997-2009) , 2010 .

[35]  Y. Shimabukuro,et al.  The Incidence of Fire in Amazonian Forests with Implications for REDD , 2010, Science.

[36]  Y. Shimabukuro,et al.  Monitoring land cover in Acre State, western Brazilian Amazonia, using multitemporal remote sensing data , 2010 .

[37]  J. Randerson,et al.  Forecasting Fire Season Severity in South America Using Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies , 2011, Science.

[38]  R. DeFries,et al.  Mapping canopy damage from understory fires in Amazon forests using annual time series of Landsat and MODIS data , 2011 .

[39]  P. Brando,et al.  Size, species, and fire behavior predict tree and liana mortality from experimental burns in the Brazilian Amazon , 2011 .

[40]  J. Marengo,et al.  The drought of 2010 in the context of historical droughts in the Amazon region , 2011 .

[41]  W. Salas,et al.  Benchmark map of forest carbon stocks in tropical regions across three continents , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[42]  S. Goetz,et al.  Estimated carbon dioxide emissions from tropical deforestation improved by carbon-density maps , 2012 .

[43]  R. Nemani,et al.  Persistent effects of a severe drought on Amazonian forest canopy , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[44]  L. Aragão,et al.  Land use and land cover changes determine the spatial relationship between fire and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon , 2012 .

[45]  R. DeFries,et al.  Decoupling of deforestation and soy production in the southern Amazon during the late 2000s , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[46]  B. Bolker,et al.  Fire‐induced tree mortality in a neotropical forest: the roles of bark traits, tree size, wood density and fire behavior , 2012 .

[47]  Juan Carlos Castilla-Rubio,et al.  Modeling the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of deforestation‐driven carbon emissions: the INPE‐EM framework applied to the Brazilian Amazon , 2012 .

[48]  I. Oliveras,et al.  Effects of fire regimes on herbaceous biomass and nutrient dynamics in the Brazilian savanna , 2013 .

[49]  R. DeFries,et al.  Understorey fire frequency and the fate of burned forests in southern Amazonia , 2013, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[50]  A. Manzi,et al.  A quick look at the 2012 record flood in the Amazon Basin , 2013 .

[51]  Frédéric Frappart,et al.  The Major Floods in the Amazonas River and Tributaries (Western Amazon Basin) during the 1970–2012 Period: A Focus on the 2012 Flood , 2013 .

[52]  J. Balch.  Atmospheric science: Drought and fire change sink to source , 2014, Nature.

[53]  Luana S. Basso,et al.  Drought sensitivity of Amazonian carbon balance revealed by atmospheric measurements , 2014, Nature.

[54]  L. Anderson,et al.  Application of remote sensing to understanding fire regimes and biomass burning emissions of the tropical Andes , 2014 .

[55]  A. Timmermann,et al.  Recent Walker circulation strengthening and Pacific cooling amplified by Atlantic warming , 2014 .

[56]  T. Nakaya,et al.  Drought impacts on children's respiratory health in the Brazilian Amazon , 2014, Scientific Reports.

[57]  Yosio Edemir Shimabukuro,et al.  Analysis and Assessment of the Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Burned Areas in the Amazon Forest , 2014, Remote. Sens..

[58]  A. Timmermann,et al.  Increasing frequency of extreme El Niño events due to greenhouse warming , 2014 .

[59]  L. Aragão,et al.  A large‐scale field assessment of carbon stocks in human‐modified tropical forests , 2014, Global change biology.

[60]  B. Poulter,et al.  Environmental change and the carbon balance of Amazonian forests , 2014, Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.

[61]  J. Townshend,et al.  Annual Carbon Emissions from Deforestation in the Amazon Basin between 2000 and 2010 , 2015, PloS one.

[62]  L. Giglio.  MODIS Collection 6 Active Fire Product User's Guide Revision A , 2015 .

[63]  William B. Rossow,et al.  Increases in tropical rainfall driven by changes in frequency of organized deep convection , 2015, Nature.

[64]  ICOLAS,et al.  Global burned-land estimation in Latin America using MODIS composite data , 2017 .