A national-scale sampled temperate fuel moisture database.

Fuel moisture content (FMC) is important for the ignitability, behaviour and severity of wildfires. Understanding the drivers of FMC and its spatial and temporal variability can help us develop fuel moisture models and inform assessments of wildfire behaviour and danger. Here we present the first United Kingdom (UK) national-scale temperate FMC dataset of 8,057 samples of eighteen different fuel constituents collected across 58 sampling sites between 2021-2023.

Diurnal fuel moisture content variations of live and dead Calluna vegetation in a temperate peatland.

The increasing frequency and severity of UK wildfires, attributed in part to the effects of climate change, highlights the critical role of fuel moisture content (FMC) of live and dead vegetation in shaping wildfire behaviour. However, current models used to assess wildfire danger do not perform well in shrub-type fuels such as Calluna vulgaris, requiring in part an improved understanding of fuel moisture dynamics on diurnal and seasonal scales. To this end, 554 samples of upper live Calluna canopy, live Calluna stems, upper dead Calluna canopy, dead Calluna stems, moss, litter and organic layer (top 5 cm of organic material above mineral soil) were sampled hourly between 10:00 and 18:00 on seven days from March-August.

Global mangrove root production, its controls and roles in the blue carbon budget of mangroves.

Mangroves are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems worldwide. Most of the carbon in mangroves is found belowground, and root production might be an important control of carbon accumulation, but has been rarely quantified and understood at the global scale. Here, we determined the global mangrove root production rate and its controls using a systematic review and a recently formalised, spatially explicit mangrove typology framework based on geomorphological settings.

Cross-country risk quantification of extreme wildfires in Mediterranean Europe.

We estimate the country-level risk of extreme wildfires defined by burned area (BA) for Mediterranean Europe and carry out a cross-country comparison. To this end, we avail of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) geospatial data from 2006 to 2019 to perform an extreme value analysis. More specifically, we apply a point process characterization of wildfire extremes using maximum likelihood estimation.

Emerging forest-peatland bistability and resilience of European peatland carbon stores.

Northern peatlands store large amounts of carbon. Observations indicate that forests and peatlands in northern biomes can be alternative stable states for a range of landscape settings. Climatic and hydrological changes may reduce the resilience of peatlands and forests, induce persistent shifts between these states, and release the carbon stored in peatlands.