DISCLAIMER: I don't want anybody getting any funny ideas about thinking that this post has anything to do with human GHG emissions being relatively harmless in comparison with the amount of emissions released by nature. Though climate change has happened quickly in the past, the data largely shows that the current climate change is being spurred on by man. Forest fires, as you'll read, are just currently of interest to me.
California, especially Northern California, is currently engulfed in forest fires. Growing up in a part of the the Santa Cruz Mountains called Bonny Doon, our largest struggles with nature were the rain's effect upon our power lines and an earthquake in '89. As a young man I was less equipped to understand the devastation wrought upon our landscaping by the deer. Despite growing up shrouded in redwood trees and pine trees, the threat of forest fire never seemed present. While attending college in Southern California, several forest fires have struck near to where I lived, and though there was the pungent smell of sulfur and the days of raining ash I was always confident in the layers of suburbia that separated my residence from the fire.
A few weeks ago a fire started near my parent's home in Bonny Doon. Fortunately, their house was spared. Unfortunately, several others homes were not. This got me thinking about forest fires in China. China is a huge country with a bunch of forests, surely there must be fires out there. I did a search, and was surprised by the depth of research into Chinese forest fires.
China's increased to ability to contain forest fires has had a tremendous impact on reducing carbon emissions from forest fires. A 1995 paper by Xiaoke Wang, Yahui Zhuang and Zongwei Feng, Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Forest Fires in China, examines the carbon footprint of forest fires in China from 1950 through 1992. During this period there was an average of 16,212 forest fires per year, which burned a cumulative total of 29% China's total forested area, or 36.31 million hectares. In this period the by just about every measure possible the most fire-ridden province was Heilongjiang.
According to the article the average annual carbon emissions amounted to 20 million t/year. This amounts to 2.94% of the carbon emissions from China's "fossil fuel combustion and cement production in 1992 (678 million t/yr)." But, this is a bit misleading as the carbon emissions from forest fires is heavily skewed towards the earlier years. In 1992 the total release of carbon from Chinese forest fires only amounted to 0.30 million t, which is only equal to 0.04% of China's total carbon emissions from fossil fuel and cement production in the same year. A short Xinhua article explains that a "nationwide satellite forest fire monitoring network and a well-equipped fire fighting force" have resulted in a drastic reduction in China forest fires since 1987.
If you're interested in data current through 2000, you should check out Spatial and temporal patterns of carbon emissions from forest fires in China from 1950 to 2000, which I unfortunately am unable to find in a free version.
If you're interested in running some comparisons with the US you could do worse than checking out:
1. US Forest Service, Forests and Carbon Storage
2. Scientific Blogging, Guessing The Carbon Footprint Of US Wildfires
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