Carbon and nitrogen emissions due to vegetation fire in Russia in 2004-2008

, and oth-ers) caused by vegetation fires in Russia between 2004-2008. Major goals of the assessment were: (1) to providespatial and temporal quantification of the emissions on a monthly basis; and (2) to minimize the uncertainties ofthe assessment, taking into account the fuzzy character of the problem. A hybrid land cover (LC) developed as abaseline dataset of all relevant information sources (different maps, multi-sensor remote sensing data, results ofdifferent land and forest inventories, measurements in situ) was used as an information background for the assess-ment. The multilayer hierarchical classification of land classes allowed detailed parameterization of vegetation andsurface soil layers with respect to indicators used in the calculation of fire emissions. The approach resulted ina comprehensive numerical description of stock and structure of vegetation combustibles (e.g., for forests: stemwood, branches, foliage, understory, green forest floor, coarse woody debris – snags, logs, dry branches of livetrees, on-ground litter, organic matter of the upper soil layer) for each 1 km pixel. Burnt areas were estimated ona monthly basis by remote sensing data (mostly based on thermal channels of AVHRR and MODIS, data obtainedby Sukachev Institute of Forest, Krasnoyarsk, Russia) and superimposed with the LC. The modeling frameworkincluded regional regularities of (1) long period seasonal distribution of burnt areas by type of fire (five typeshave been used for forests: crown, superficial ground, stable ground, peat (soil), underground fires); (2) averageintensity of burning (amount of consumed combustibles) dependently on time of fire season, type of fire, and veg-etation class; (3) partition of consumed carbon (gas composition, particles); (4) content of nitrogen in major typesof combustibles; (5) expected amount of post fire dieback in perennial vegetation; and others. Intensity of firewas corrected based on average monthly weather conditions. Amount of emitted nitrogen was estimated based onits proportion to carbon by types of combustibles. Gas composition was estimated based on published results ofmeasurements. The results obtained indicate high variability of emissions by land classes, type of fire, time of fireseason, specifics of weather with overall consumption of combustibles over the country in the range 140 to 330 TgC year