Canada 2018 expedition is over!

This year’s Canada campaign (25.07. – 15.08.2018) was divided into two. Part of the team was working on permafrost areas along the Dempster Higway (NWT and Yukon, Canada), the other part of the team was working on non-permafrost areas, on FireSmart project sites (NWT, Canada).

On Dempster Highway (works done by Prof. J. Pumpanen and PhD student H. Aaltonen) the sample plots that were established in summer of 2015 were re-visited. This year’s focus was on VOC measurements along fire chronocequence (fires in years 2012, 1990, and fire about 100 years ago).

The short term effects of fires and the effect of different fire severity on SOM turnover was studied on experimental burning areas (the Canadian Boreal Community FireSmart Project sites and old International Crown Fire Modeling Experiment (ICFME) sites close to Fort Providence, NWT, Canada (works done by PhD K. Köster and PhD student C. Ribeiro). The research was conducted based on intensive field sampling to study soil C and N stocks, soil CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes, soil temperature and soil chemical and microbiological properties, tree and vegetation composition and biomass changes. Unfortunately this year there was no possibility to perform high intensity crown fire, but we managed to measure in many low intensity surface fire plots. The measurements were conducted before the fire experiment, straight after fire experiment, and couple of days after fire experiment. We also measured on old fire experiment areas, where the fires took place 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 18 years ago.

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