Prescribed Burning and Forest Wildfires

It is interesting to compare the quantities of tropical biomass burned with those due to fires in temperate and boreal forests. Although individual wildfires may be large, because of fire-fighting efforts, the area burned per year is relatively small. Stocks [24] estimates that about 8 million ha of temperate and boreal forests are subject to wildfires each year. 

Prescribed burning is commonly used for forest management. It serves mainly to reduce the accumulation of dry, combustible plant debris in order to prevent destructive wildfires. Because it is limited to North America and Australia and the area involved is only 2-3 million ha per year [10], it has little impact on a global scale. Together some 150-300 Tg of C per year are burned by prescribed burning and wildfires, much less than through fires in the tropics. 

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