Notes from the field – First stop: Sampling of 2023 fires in Quebec

This blog post is the first in an upcoming series. Our team, the Climate Change and Ecosystems Research Group at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, is working in collaboration with the Environmental Change Research Unit at the University of Helsinki for a summer full of fieldwork, in science and adventure. During this trip, our first stop was the province of Quebec in Canada. I am writing this article after our last day of fieldwork here.

The 2023 wildfire season was Canada’s largest on record, with more than double the area burned, the second largest year. In Quebec, an estimated 4.5 million hectares were burned, an area slightly larger than the size of the Netherlands. This record fire season in Quebec is due to extremely hot and dry conditions. Thick plumes of smoke from the 2023 Quebec fires shocked the world when the smoke reached several cities on the east coast of the United States, including New York.

Scientific colleagues have dug deep to understand and explain the phenomena involved in this fire season in Quebec. However, to our knowledge, no estimate of carbon combustion, or the quantity of carbon per burned area that is released during a fire, has ever been carried out in Quebec. That’s why we’re here! On site, since field measurements are an excellent way to quantify carbon emissions linked to fires.

We assess post-fire ecosystem effects to calculate below-ground and above-ground carbon pools. In other words, it is the carbon stored in the soil and vegetation. After collecting soil samples and inventorying vegetation, we can compare burned and unburned (control) locations to estimate the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere due to fire. We make this comparison based on the so-called adventitious root method. On black spruce trees, adventitious roots grow above the initial crown into the upper soil layers and provide a reference for pre-fire soil height, as they remain clearly visible several years after fire.

During our expedition, we covered more than 4,000 kilometers on the road. We began by traveling north from Montreal along the James Bay Highway and began our sampling at two fires near the town of Radisson, where the remote Trans-Taiga Highway was our daily route. We then headed to Waskaganish, on the southeast shore of James Bay, where we sampled another fire. Finally, we ended our campaign with a large fire in the commercial forest near the town of Lebel-sur-Quévillon. All these trips allowed us to carry out a scientifically interesting transect from the North to the South of the province of Quebec. We also discovered incredible places and we thank the people who live there who welcomed us.

We were able to observe two different types of mixed ecosystems in the fires we visited. We found forests dominated by black spruce in the peat lowlands. In the drier and often rocky uplands, jack pines dominated. I am curious to see how these differences will be reflected in practice when we analyze carbon combustion in these systems.

Our campaign team consisted of Lucas Diaz, Max van Gerrevink, Thomas Janssen, Yuquan Qu and Sander Veraverbeke from VU Amsterdam, as well as Sonja Granqvist from the University of Helsinki. The success of this expedition is also thanks to our collaborators here in Quebec who helped us during our preparation: Dominique Arseneault (Université du Québec à Rimouski), Jonathan Boucher and Yan Boulanger (Canadian Forest Service) and Fabio Gennaretti (University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue).

This fieldwork is part of my doctoral project, so I was responsible for leading and organizing the entire expedition. As difficult as it was, the whole process was also a lot of fun. Many times during the campaign, I felt like I was going on a vacation trip with a group of friends. Ultimately, this isn’t entirely wrong. This kind of experience brings us closer to people. This strengthens existing bonds and creates new ones. This beautiful adventure gave me moments that I will remember forever.

Time flies here in the boreal forest. Soon it will be time to pack our bags and embark on the rest of this fiery journey. Curious about the destination? Stay tuned!

The fire expedition in Quebec is part of FireIce (Fire in the land of ice: climatic factors & feedback). FireIce is a Consolidator project funded by the European Research Council. FireIce is affiliated with NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE). This blog post was written by Lucas Ribeiro Diaz, a Ph.D. student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, studying Arctic-Boreal fires by combining field and remote sensing approaches.

Keywords: ABoVE 2024, earth, FireIce, forest fires

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