The terrestrial carbon sink has significantly increased in the past decades, but the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. A concurrent global fire decline was observed in association with tropical agriculture expansion and landscape fragmentation. This paper shows that a decline of 0.2 ± 0.1 PgC yr−1 in fire emissions during 2008–2014 relative to 2001–2007 also induced an additional carbon sink enhancement of 0.4 ± 0.2 PgC yr−1 attributable to carbon cycle feedbacks. The results suggest that the indirect effects of fire, in addition to the direct emissions, is an overlooked mechanism for explaining decadal-scale changes in the land carbon sink and highlight the importance of fire management in climate mitigation.

Yi Yin, A. Anthony Bloom, John Worden, Sassan Saatchi, Yan Yang, Mathew Williams, Junjie Liu, Zhe Jiang, Helen Worden, Kevin Bowman, Christian Frankenberg, David Schimel