Fires in Siberian Boreal Forests: Causes and Impacts

The author carried out more than thirty simulative fire experiments in the forests of Krasnoyarsk Krai within the framework of the international projects on fires in boreal forests. We obtained the representative and statistically-valid experimental data on how wildfires behave in the conditions of Siberian climate and landscape; what energy combustion properties of the forest biomass are; what smoke emissions into atmosphere are and how they impact on the chemical, optic, and respiratory properties of the near-earth atmosphere as well as weather and climate; to what degree, depending on fire intensity, the forest stand is destructed after fires; how physical and chemical properties of the forest soils can change; how fires impact on forest biocoenosis; and for how long biocoenosis can be restored after wildfires. The data obtained could be applied to assessing ecologic and economic damages from fires happened in the pine and larch forests commonly observed in Siberia