We used radiocarbon dating of the organic soil surface remaining post-fire to examine whether the fire burned into ancient and likely irreplaceable soil C pools. Suprisingly, it did not; all radiocarbon dates from burned soil surfaces contained bomb carbon, setting the maximum age of the burned soil surfaces at ~50 years.
Data Set Results
The Anaktuvuk River Fire occurred in 2007 on the North Slope of Alaska. In 2008, three eddy covariance towers were established at sites represent ing unburned tundra, moderately burned tundra, and severely burned tundra. Several times during the 2008-2014 growing seasons, thaw depth was measured at approximately 70 points near each of these towers . Data presented here are the individual measurements for each site and date.
Organic soil from either the Anaktuvik severe burn or Toolik Lake were collected to test of effect of removal of mycorrhizae on decompositon of tundra at Toolik Lake and the Anaktuvuk Burn IN 2016.
A licor 6400 with 6400-09 soil respiration chamber was used to measure soil respiration (efflux) from the cores on a weekly basis.