Northern high-latitude permafrost holds the largest soil carbon pool in the world. Understanding the responses of permafrost to wildfire is crucial for improving our ability to predict permafrost degradation and further carbon emissions. Recently, studies have demonstrated that wildfires in the pan-Arctic region induced the thickening of the active layer based on site or fire event observations. However, how this induced thickening is influenced by vegetation and permafrost types remains not fully understood due to the lack of wall-to-wall analysis. Therefore, this study employed remotely sensed fire data and modelled active layer thickness (ALT) to identify the fire-induced ALT change (ΔALT) for the pan-Arctic region, and the contributions of vegetation and permafrost were quantified using the random forest (RF) model. Our results showed that the average ΔALT and the sensitivity of ΔALT to burn severity both increased with decreasing ground ice content in permafrost. The largest values were detected in thick permafrost with low ground ice content. Regarding vegetation, the average and sensitivity of ΔALT in tundra were highest, followed by those in forest and shrub. When the individual environmental factors were all taken into account, the results showed that the contribution of vegetation types was much higher than that of permafrost types (20.2 % vs. 3.5 %). Our findings highlighted the importance of environmental factors in regulating the responses of permafrost to fire.
Keywords: Active layer thickness; Pan-Arctic; Permafrost degradation; Permafrost type; Vegetation type; Wildfires.
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