Abstract
Across northern latitudes, the modern boreal forest extends over about 1.2 ×107 km2, an extraordinarily vast area that spans northern Europe, Asia, and North America (Van Cleve et al. 1983a; Nikolov and Helmisaari 1992). Periodic wildfires are common to this forest. Areas burned have large year-to-year variation, depending on climatic conditions; on average, on the order of 105 km2 of boreal forest burns each year (Stocks et al. 1996). Individual fires occasionally burn extensive areas, sometimes covering greater than 1,000,000 ha in a single burn (Cahoon et al. 1994; Murphy et al., this volume).
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Richter, D.D., O’Neill, K.P., Kasischke, E.S. (2000). Postfire Stimulation of Microbial Decomposition in Black Spruce (Picea mariana L.) Forest Soils: A Hypothesis. In: Kasischke, E.S., Stocks, B.J. (eds) Fire, Climate Change, and Carbon Cycling in the Boreal Forest. Ecological Studies, vol 138. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-21629-4_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-21629-4_11
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