Fires: the catastrophic consequences of boreal forest fires

Guillaume Dominguez, edited by Gauthier Delomez 6:35 a.m., August 19, 2022, modified at 6:36 a.m., August 19, 2022

This is a sad observation made in a recent study: in 20 years, the number of hectares of forest burned by fires in the world has doubled.

Each year, three million more hectares go up in smoke, the equivalent of the area of ​​Belgium.

And of those hectares, seven out of ten forest fires occur in boreal forests.

They are located at the extreme north of the continents and cover more than 1.2 billion hectares distributed between Russia, Canada and Alaska.

>> READ ALSO

- Forest fires in France: a record area burned in July

According to Thierry Gauquelin, professor at the Mediterranean Institute of Biodiversity and Ecology in Marseille, fires in these regions are not uncommon.

What is, however, are the weather conditions of the past 20 years.

“These high latitude areas have experienced a number of episodes of drought, intense heat. As these are forests made up mainly of conifers, we have all the conditions for these fires to increase”, he explains on Europe 1. "That's what is really worrying," he adds.

Very large amounts of CO2 in the air

In Russia alone, 53 million hectares of the taiga have been destroyed in 20 years, the equivalent of the area of ​​France.

At the end of the day, there are catastrophic consequences on the climate.

"Of course, the vegetation burns, but also the soil, which is very rich in organic matter", underlines the professor.

"Here too, we are putting very large quantities of CO2 back into the atmosphere."

>> Find Europe Matin in replay and podcast here

According to him, the ever-increasing destruction of its forests could, in the long term, limit their capacity to absorb greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere.