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As the northern high latitude permafrost zone experiences accelerated warming, permafrost has become vulnerable to widespread thaw. Simultaneously, wildfire activity across northern boreal forest and Arctic/subarctic tundra regions impact permafrost stability through the combustion of insulating organic matter, vegetation and post-fire changes in albedo. Efforts to synthesise the impacts of wildfire on permafrost are limited and are typically reliant on antecedent pre-fire conditions. To address this, we created the FireALT dataset by soliciting data contributions that included thaw depth measurements, site conditions, and fire event details with paired measurements at environmentally comparable burned and unburned sites. The solicitation resulted in 52,466 thaw depth measurements from 18 contributors across North America and Russia. Because thaw depths were taken at various times throughout the thawing season, we also estimated end of season active layer thickness (ALT) for each measurement using a modified version of the Stefan equation. Here, we describe our methods for collecting and quality checking the data, estimating ALT, the data structure, strengths and limitations, and future research opportunities. The final dataset includes 47,952 ALT estimates (27,747 burned, 20,205 unburned) with 32 attributes. There are 193 unique paired burned/unburned sites spread across 12 ecozones that span Canada, Russia, and the United States. The data span fire events from 1900 to 2022. Time since fire ranges from zero to 114 years. The FireALT dataset addresses a key challenge: the ability to assess impacts of wildfire on ALT when measurements are taken at various times throughout the thaw season depending on the time of field campaigns (typically June through August) by estimating ALT at the end of season maximum. This dataset can be used to address understudied research areas particularly algorithm development, calibration, and validation for evolving process-based models as well as extrapolating across space and time, which could elucidate permafrost-wildfire interactions under accelerated warming across the high northern latitude permafrost zone. The FireALT dataset is available through the Arctic Data Center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boreal fire regimes are intensifying because of climate change, and the northern parts of boreal forests are underlain by permafrost. Boreal fires combust vegetation and organic soils, which insulate permafrost, and as such deepen the seasonally thawed active layer and can lead to further carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Current understanding of the environmental drivers of post-fire thaw depth is limited but of critical importance. In addition, mapping thaw depth over fire scars may enable a better understanding of the spatial variability in post-fire responses of permafrost soils. We assessed the environmental drivers of post-fire thaw depth using field data from a fire scar in a larch-dominated forest in the continuous permafrost zone in eastern Siberia. Particularly, summer thaw depth was deeper in burned (mean=127.3 cm, standard deviation (SD) = 27.7 cm) than in unburned (98.1 cm, SD=26.9 cm) landscapes 1 year after the fire, yet the effect of fire was modulated by landscape and vegetation characteristics. We found deeper thaw in well-drained upland, in open and mature larch forest often intermixed with Scots pine, and in high-severity burns. The environmental drivers basal area, vegetation density, and burn depth explained 73.3 % of the measured thaw depth variability at the study sites. In addition, we evaluated the relationships between field-measured thaw depth and several remote sensing proxies. Albedo, the differenced normalized burn ratio (dNBR), and the pre-fire normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) derived from Landsat 8 imagery together explained 66.3 % of the variability in field-measured thaw depth. Moreover, land surface temperature (LST) displayed particularly strong correlations with post-fire thaw depth (r=0.65 , p<0.01). Based on these remote sensing proxies and multiple linear regression analysis, we estimated thaw depth over the entire fire scar. Our study reveals some of the governing processes of post-fire thaw depth development and shows the capability of Landsat imagery to estimate post-fire thaw depth at a landscape scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boreal and Arctic regions have warmed up to four times quicker than the rest of the planet since the 1970s. As a result, boreal and tundra ecosystems are experiencing more frequent and higher intensity extreme weather events and disturbances, such as wildfires. Yet limitations in ground and satellite data across the Arctic and boreal regions have challenged efforts to track these disturbances at regional scales. In order to effectively monitor the progression and extent of wildfires in the Arctic-boreal zone, it is essential to determine whether burned area (BA) products are accurate representations of BA. Here, we use 12 different datasets together with MODIS active fire data to determine the total yearly BA and seasonal patterns of fires in Arctic-boreal North America and Russia for the years 2001–2020. We found relatively little variability between the datasets in North America, both in terms of total BA and seasonality, with an average BA of 2.55 ± 1.24 (standard deviation) Mha/year for our analysis period, the majority (ca. 41%) of which occurs in July. In contrast, in Russia, there are large disparities between the products—GFED5 produces over four times more BA than GFED4s in southern Siberia. These disparities occur due to the different methodologies used; dNBR (differenced Normalized Burn Ratio) of short-term composites from Landsat images used alongside hotspot data was the most consistently successful in representing BA. We stress caution using GABAM in these regions, especially for the years 2001–2013, as Landsat-7 ETM+ scan lines are mistaken as burnt patches, increasing errors of commission. On the other hand, we highlight using regional products where possible, such as ABoVE-FED or ABBA in North America, and the Talucci et al. fire perimeter product in Russia, due to their detection of smaller fires which are often missed by global products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]