News
See news coverage in The Guardian and University of Cambridge and general coverage here of our research.
Spikes in UK wildfire emissions driven by peatland fires in dry years
New paper in Environmental Research Letters mapping fires in the United Kingdom where we found emissions primarilly arising from burning peatlands during dry years, with emissions expected to increase by 60% under future climate conditions.
Soil carbon storage capacity of drylands under altered fire regimes
New paper in Nature Climate Change showing that the potential for storing carbon in soils under altered fire regimes can be greatest in dryland ecosystems, highlighting the key services these ecosystems provide.
Modelling the future of soils in the world’s savanna-grasslands
1.5 million euro grant from the European Research Council to study how soils can be used to offset climate change. We aim to understand how fire management can impact soil carbon sequestration at the global scale using experimental tests of underlying mechanisms, development of process-based models, and implementation of our findings into an active carbon-credit marketplace.
Fire effects on the persistence of soil organic matter and long-term carbon storage
New paper in Nature Geoscience on a review of recent advances to illustrate that fire-driven changes in decomposition, mediated by altered soil organic matter stability, are an important compensatory process offsetting declines in aboveground biomass pools.
Decadal changes in fire frequencies shift treecommunities and functional traits
New paper published in Nature Ecology and Evolution using global network of decadal fire manipulations to demonstrate strong effects on tree basal area, stem densities, and plant nutrient use and acquisition strategies. Publication link text
Repeated fire shifts carbon and nitrogen cycling by changing plant inputs and soil decomposition across ecosystems
New paper published in Ecological Monographs demonstrating how repeated burning can reduce soil carbon and nitrogen storage and turnover. Measuring extracellular enzymes revealed that fire does not affect all aspects of decomposition equally however, with disproportionate reduction in the acquisition of nitrogen and labile carbon sources.