ABoVE: Spatial Estimates of Carbon Combustion from Wildfires across SK, Canada, 2015

Carbon combustion (kg C/m2) was derived from post-fire field measurements of carbon stocks completed in 2016 at 47 stands that burned during three 2015 Saskatchewan wildfires (Egg, Philion, and Brady) and at 32 unburned stands in adjacent areas. The study areas covered two ecozones (Boreal Plains and Boreal Shield), two stand-replacing history types (fire and timber harvest), three soil moisture classes (xeric, mesic, and subhygric), and three stand dominance classifications (coniferous, deciduous, and mixed).

To spatially extrapolate estimates of combustion to all 2015 fires in Saskatchewan, a predictive radial support vector machine model was trained on the 47 burned stands with associated environmental variables and geospatial predictors and applied to historical fire areas. The dataset also includes uncertainty estimates represented as per pixel standard deviations of model estimates derived using a Monte Carlo analysis.