Post-Fire Soil Carbon Recovery in Canadian Boreal Forest Plots

511 forested plots across ~140,000 km2 in two ecozones of Canada's Northwest Territories provide data on post-fire soil and vegetation recovery. Measurements from 2015 to 2018 include soil organic layer thickness, carbon content, tree density, and nonvascular plant cover across 41 wildfire scars and unburned areas. The dataset was produced by NASA and offers a detailed ground-level view of boreal forest ecosystem dynamics following disturbance.

Use Cases

• Modeling soil organic carbon stock changes after wildfire using soil organic layer thickness and carbon percentage columns.
• Analyzing relationships between time-after-fire, tree species dominance (jack pine proportion, deciduous proportion), and understory plant cover.
• Comparing post-fire recovery metrics like soil moisture and stand dominance across different ecozones (Plains vs. Shield).

Strengths

• Includes 511 spatially distributed plots with detailed ground measurements across a vast 140,000 km2 study area.
• Soil carbon analysis is based on a substantial subset of 2,067 increments from 1,803 profiles analyzed with a CHN analyzer.
• Data collection spans a defined time range (2015-06-11 to 2018-08-24) across 41 distinct wildfire scars and unburned control areas.

Limitations

• Key metadata conflicts exist: the row count is unknown, and the license is ambiguously listed as 'other-license-specified' without details.
• Column names are not provided by any source platform, limiting immediate understanding of the data structure.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Field measurements from plot transects, including soil coring, tree species identification, and quadrat sampling for plant cover.

Time Range

2015-06 11 to 2018-08-24

Freshness

2026-03-12 22:36:37.094643

Geography

Two ecozones (Plains and Shield) spanning ~140,000 km2 in the Northwest Territories, Canada.