Evaluation of gas emissions from forest fires in Cuba in the period 1989-2014
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Abstract
The emissions of gases linked to vegetation fires are recognized as an important disturbance of the biogeochemical cycles, especially the carbon cycle. Interdisciplinary research aims to improve knowledge of complex processes such as fire-forest-climate interactions. Fires have an annual cycle that is strongly related to natural fluctuations of climatic conditions, as well as disturbances of human origin. The quantification of emissions forces us to make very general assumptions about the amount of biomass available and about the efficiency of combustion. The information of hectares burned, as well as date, place, type of species burned and type of fire is provided by the Forest ranger of Cuba. The recommendations indicated in the Revised Guidelines of the 1996 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are applied, estimating carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, and nitrogen oxides The objective of the work is to evaluate 25 years of data of forest fires and characteristics of the emissions according to the quality of the data. Climatic zoning is essential to know the distribution of vegetation, so the behavior of forest fires is evaluated according to the climatic regions studied. In addition, fires have an impact on biological diversity and emissions were calculated for some types of species. It is consolidated with graphs and tables to show the result with better quality and less uncertainty, which will depend on how much information, is available for each fire.
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