The investigation was carried out in the Metolius River Basin, where about one third (100,000 acres) of area burned in four major fires in 2002-03. Although some previous studies assumed that 30 percent of the mass of living trees was consumed during the forest fires in the new study has concluded that only 1 to 3 percent was consumed by flames .

Some estimates made at that time suggested that one of the four fires which occurred in 2003, released a 600 per cent more carbon emissions that any consumption of fossil fuel energy and that year in the state of Oregon. But in this new study has concluded that the four fires combined produced only about 2.5 percent of annual carbon emissions in that state.

Even in 2002, the year end in fire in recent history, researchers estimate that all forest fires in Oregon issued only about 22 percent of industrial emissions and fossil fuels in the state, and that percentage is much smaller for most years, about 3 percent annual average in the 10 years between 1992 and 2001.

The researchers argue that there are some serious errors in assumptions about what proportion of each forest burns in the fire really, a great range of variability, much less carbon released from what had been previously suggested.

“We need a new notion of what we are calling” pirodiversidad “or wide variation in terms of impact and responses to fires,” says Garrett Meigs, Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, Oregon State University.
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Source:amazings