Wildfire is the largest disturbance affecting northern peatlands

The gap

Evidence profile

Sourced from the future work and future-work section and abstract of the source papers, classified as general, drawn from work published between 2015 and 2026, spanning 3 journals. Those papers have been cited 34 times in total.

Supporting evidence — 3 representative gaps

• Fire frequency differentially affects carbon pools and pyrogenic organic matter in a South African montane grassland (2026) · Plant and Soil · doi

  This study used samples from 0–5  cm and 5–15  cm from plots that were treated with annual, bien- nial, quinquennial and infrequent spring-burn treat- ments. Future studies could continue and expand this research by including seasonality and deeper soil sample depths. The burning season significantly influences the growth of vegetation (Trollope 2009) and the effect of fire on SOC (Findlay et  al. 2022). Therefore, it would be relevant to also look at the effect of season of burn on carbon distribution in soils. Regarding the depth of sampling, Ward et  al. (2016) reported considerable carbon stocks in British mesic grassland soils at depths of 30 cm to 100 cm, with significant effects of management. This poten- tially suggests an important research gap for the effects of fire regimes on soil C to depths greater than those examined here. Carbon sequestration is cur- rently considered to be a climate mitigation option (Lavallee et al. 2019; Veldman et al. 2015; Viret and Grand 2019). However, the long-term effects of fire on soil carbon storage (and its implication for climate change) remains poorly understood. Fire exclusion policies have potentially harmed stable carbon stor- age (Gao et  al. 2024), therefore further researching the soil carbon storage potential as a result of fire will therefore be an important direction for future studies (Lavallee et al. 2019; Rumpel et al. 2020).

  generalfuture work
  Keywords: carbon fire soil depths effects burn future season effect soils important climate lavallee storage used
• Spatial distribution of soil organic carbon in contrasting management of grasslands in typical steppes of the Mongolian plateau (2026) · Frontiers in Environmental Science · doi

  Further research is needed to understand the effects of different grazing regimes on SOC in other regions, - Studies should investigate the impact of other factors on SOC, such as climate change and land use patterns, - Research should focus on developing strategies for maintaining and enhancing soil carbon storage in grassland ecosystems

  generalfuture-work sectionevidence 5/5
  Keywords: further research needed understand effects different grazing regimes
• Burn severity alters peatland moss water availability: implications for post‐fire recovery (2015) · Ecohydrology · cited 34× · doi

  Abstract Wildfire is the largest disturbance affecting northern peatlands; however, little is known about how burn severity (organic soil depth of burn) alters post‐fire hydrological conditions that control the recovery of keystone peatland mosses (i.

  generalabstractevidence 4/5
  Keywords: burn abstract wildfire largest disturbance affecting northern peatlands little known severity organic soil depth alters

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