ABoVE: Characterization of Burned and Unburned Boreal Forest Stands, SK, Canada, 2016

Measurements were completed in 2016 at 47 stands that burned in the 2015 Saskatchewan wildfires (Egg, Philion, and Brady) and at 32 unburned stands in comparable adjacent areas.

Stands were characterized through field observations and sampling of the vegetative community (i.e., tree species, abundance, and biophysical measurements, stand age, coarse woody debris, history of fires or logging), soils (i.e., soil moisture class, unburned and burned soil organic layer depth, samples for bulk density and carbon analyses), and basic landscape geophysical traits. From these results, the pre-fire carbon stocks and carbon combustion values from both the above- and below-ground pools were estimated using a combination of linear and mixed-effects modeling and were calibrated against carbons stocks from the unburned stands.