Peatlands typically act as carbon sinks, however, increasing wildfire severity and annual area burned may challenge this carbon sink status. Whilst most peat resistance to wildfire and drought research is based on deep peatlands that rarely lose their water table below the peat profile, shallow peatlands and peat deposits may be most vulnerable to high peat burn severity and extensive carbon loss. To examine the role of pre-fire peat depth on peat burn severity, we measured the depth of burn (DOB) in peat of varying depths (0.1–1.6 m) within a rock barrens landscape. We found that DOB (0–0.4 m) decreased with increasing pre-fire peat depth, and that there was a strong correlation between the percent of the profile that burned and pre-fire peat depth. Breakpoint analysis indicates a threshold depth of 0.66 m where deeper peat deposits experienced little impact of wildfire, whereas shallower peat typically experienced high peat burn severity (median percent burned = 2.2 and 65.1, ...

中文翻译：

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浅泥炭最容易在野火期间遭受高泥炭烧伤严重性的影响

泥炭地通常充当碳汇，但是，野火的严重性和每年燃烧面积的增加可能会挑战碳汇的地位。尽管大多数泥炭对野火和干旱的抵抗力都是基于深泥炭地的，这些泥炭地很少失去低于泥炭剖面的地下水位，但浅泥炭地和泥炭沉积物最容易遭受高泥炭燃烧严重性和大量碳损失的影响。为了检查预燃泥炭深度对泥炭燃烧严重性的作用，我们测量了岩石贫瘠地区内不同深度（0.1-1.6 m）的泥炭的燃烧深度（DOB）。我们发现DOB（0–0.4 m）随着预燃泥炭深度的增加而减小，并且燃烧剖面的百分比与预燃泥炭深度之间存在很强的相关性。断点分析表明阈值深度为0。