Wildfires on Alaska’s North Slope were more active this past century than at any time in the past 3,000 years, according to a study recently published in the journal Biogeosciences.
Wildfires on Alaska’s North Slope were more active this past century than at any time in the past 3,000 years, according to a study recently published in the journal Biogeosciences.
The study was conducted in Arctic Alaska by an international team of researchers from Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, Romania and the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Toolik Field Station.
Angelica Feurdean, the study’s lead author and a senior researcher at Goethe University in Germany, said the team took a multidisciplinary approach to reconstructing fire history. Their findings point to record-high activity caused by increasing woody plants and drying soils, two consequences of warming temperatures.
“The interlinked changes across millennia mean recent fires are indicators of a system undergoing rapid transformation,” Feurdean said.
Read More: University of Alaska Fairbanks
Image: Photo by Marius Gałka
From left, researchers Angelica Feurdean, Graeme Swindles and Mariusz Gałka pause in the midst of wildfire smoke near Atigun Gorge in Alaska’s Brooks Range in summer 2015.
