Chemical characteristics of wildfire ash across the globe and their environmental and socio-economic implications

Sánchez-García, C.; Santín, C.; Neris, J.; Sigmund, G.; Otero, X.L.; Manley, J.; González-Rodríguez, G.; Belcher, C.M.; Cerdà, A.; Marcotte, A.L.; Murphy, S.F.; Rhoades, C.C.; Sheridan, G.; Strydom, T.; Robichaud, P.R.; Doerr, S.H.

doi:10.1016/j.envint.2023.108065

Cited by 27 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…There is limited knowledge about the impact of fire ashes on microbial communities within estuary and coastal ecosystems. Fire ashes are highly mobile and contain nutrients, toxic metals, and metalloids that can incorporate into the soil, be transported by water or runoff, and be mobilized by smoke and wind compromising human and environmental health. , Fire ashes reaching estuarine and coastal zones alter nutrient, carbon, and metal concentrations resulting in changes in the coastal microbial community composition and phytoplankton production. ,− …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fire ashes are highly mobile and contain nutrients, toxic metals, and metalloids that can incorporate into the soil, be transported by water or runoff, and be mobilized by smoke and wind compromising human and environmental health. 40,120 Fire ashes reaching estuarine and coastal zones alter nutrient, carbon, and metal concentrations resulting in changes in the coastal microbial community composition and phytoplankton production. 112,121−123 This study aimed to establish a foundational understanding of the potential repercussions of environmentally relevant concentrations of WUI fire ashes on coastal microbial communities using V. vulnificus as a model of an opportunistic bacterial pathogen that is prevalent in many estuarine ecosystems.…”

Section: Conceptual Model and Potential Coastal Ecosystem Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Wildfire Ashes from the Wildland-Urban Interface Alter Vibrio vulnificus Growth and Gene Expression

Correa Velez,

Alam,

Baalousha

et al. 2024

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Climate change-induced stressors are contributing to the emergence of infectious diseases, including those caused by marine bacterial pathogens such as Vibrio spp. These stressors alter Vibrio temporal and geographical distribution, resulting in increased spread, exposure, and infection rates, thus facilitating greater Vibrio−human interactions. Concurrently, wildfires are increasing in size, severity, frequency, and spread in the built environment due to climate change, resulting in the emission of contaminants of emerging concern. This study aimed to understand the potential effects of urban interface wildfire ashes on Vibrio vulnificus (V. vulnificus) growth and gene expression using transcriptomic approaches. V. vulnificus was exposed to structural and vegetation ashes and analyzed to identify differentially expressed genes using the HTSeq-DESeq2 strategy. Exposure to wildfire ash altered V. vulnificus growth and gene expression, depending on the trace metal composition of the ash. The high Fe content of the vegetation ash enhanced bacterial growth, while the high Cu, As, and Cr content of the structural ash suppressed growth. Additionally, the overall pattern of upregulated genes and pathways suggests increased virulence potential due to the selection of metal-and antibiotic-resistant strains. Therefore, mixed fire ashes transported and deposited into coastal zones may lead to the selection of environmental reservoirs of Vibrio strains with enhanced antibiotic resistance profiles, increasing public health risk.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conceptual Model and Potential Coastal Ecosystem Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wildfire Ashes from the Wildland-Urban Interface Alter Vibrio vulnificus Growth and Gene Expression

Correa Velez,

Alam,

Baalousha

et al. 2024

Environ. Sci. Technol.

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“…While a review of the literature broadly indicates that ash chemistry changes with burn severity, there is considerable heterogeneity of results, suggesting that there is a spatial and perhaps methodological influence on how ash geochemistry changes with burn severity. There is better agreement between studies of the water-extractable component of ash leachates (e.g., Burton et al, 2016;Miotliński et al, 2023;Pereira et al, 2012;Quintana et al, 2007;Sánchez-García et al, 2023;Úbeda et al, 2009), with acid-digested samples tending to be less consistent. In general, our results show strong agreement with Miotliński et al (2023) for leachate data from combustion simulation experiments conducted on soils and vegetation litter from southwestern Western Australia, see Table S5.1 in Text S5 in Supporting Information S1.…”

Section: Ash Leachate Chemistry Changes With Burn Severitymentioning

confidence: 90%

“…In experimental settings, hotter combustion temperatures have been shown to result in Ca/Mg ratios in ash leachates of <1 (Marion et al., 1991; Úbeda et al., 2009). However, in ashes from both experimental studies and wildfires with known burn temperature or severity (Balfour & Woods, 2013; Miotliński et al., 2023; Pereira et al., 2012; Sánchez‐García et al., 2023; Santín et al., 2015; Úbeda et al., 2009), the response of both Ca and Mg to burn severity is variable, and none of the published concentrations support the hypothesis that this ratio indicates burn severity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combustion Completeness and Sample Location Determine Wildfire Ash Leachate Chemistry

Campbell,

Treble,

McDonough

et al. 2024

Geochem Geophys Geosyst

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Understanding past fire regimes and how they vary with climate, human activity, and vegetation patterns is fundamental to the mitigation and management of changing fire regimes as anthropogenic climate change progresses. Ash‐derived trace elements and pyrogenic biomarkers from speleothems have recently been shown to record past fire activity in speleothems from both Australia and North America. This calls for an empirical study of ash geochemistry to aid the interpretation of speleothem palaeofire proxy records. Here we present analyses of leached ashes collected following fires in southwest and southeast Australia. We include a suite of inorganic elemental data from the water‐soluble fraction of ash as well as a selection of organic analytes (pyrogenic lipid biomarkers). We also present elemental data from leachates of soils collected from sites in southwest Australia. We demonstrate that the water‐soluble fraction of ash differs from the water‐soluble fraction of soils, with trace and minor element concentrations in ash leachates varying with combustion completeness (burn severity) and sample location. Changes in some lipid biomarker concentrations extracted from ashes may reflect burn severity. Our results contribute to building a process‐based understanding of how speleothem geochemistry may record fire frequency and severity, and suggest that more research is needed to understand the transport pathways for the inclusion of pyrogenic biomarkers in speleothems. Our results also demonstrate that potential contaminant loads from ashes are much higher than from soils, with implications for the management of karst catchments, which are a critical water resource.

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“…salmon) are also more susceptible to the alkalinization-linked impacts of post-wildfire ash-input. Besides baseline water pH and alkalinity, there are many other variables that could influence post-wildfire pH responses including wildfire intensity (Santín et al, 2015;Sánchez-García et al, 2023), including soil pH and composition (Marcotte et al, 2022), amount of rainfall or snowmelt (Rhoades et al, 2011), watershed size and slope (Neary et al, 2003), and algal biomass (Hohner et al, 2019). Taken together, the impacts of wildfire on aquatic watersheds will likely be systemspecific, and subsequent organismal response species-specific.…”

Section: Environmental Relevance and Potential Management Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fish Blood Response to Ash-Induced Environmental Alkalinization, and their Implications to Wildfire-Scarred Watersheds

Kwan,

Sanders,

Huang

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Changes in land use, warming climate and increased drought have amplified wildfire frequency and magnitude globally. Ash mixing into aquatic systems after wildfires rapidly increases water pH, creating an additional threat to wildlife, especially species that are already threatened, endangered and/or migratory. Here, Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) yearlings acclimated to 15 or 20°C were exposed to an environmentally relevant concentration of ash (0.25% w/v) which caused water pH to rapidly rise from ∼8.1 to ∼9.2. Mortalities occurred within the first 12 hours, and was higher at the higher temperature (33 versus 20 %). The greatest differences in blood chemistry between the two temperatures were dramatically greater (∼7.5-fold) and very rapid (within 1 hour) spikes in both plasma total ammonia (to ∼1200 µM) and lactate (to ∼6 mM) in warm-acclimated salmon, whereas cold-acclimated salmon experienced a much smaller and gradual rise in plasma total ammonia. Salmon at both temperatures experienced extracellular and intracellular alkalosis within 1 hour that recovered within 24 hours, but the alkalosis was smaller in magnitude in fish at warmer temperature. Impacts on plasma ion concentrations were relatively mild and plasma glucose increased by 2- to 4-fold at both temperatures. Notably, the increase in plasma total ammonia in fish at the warmer temperature was far faster and much greater than those reported in previous studies exposing fish despite higher water pH (9.4-10.5) induced without using ash. This suggests that ash has physiological impacts that cannot be explained by high water pH alone which may relate to the complex mixture of metals and organic compounds also released from ash. This demonstrates post-wildfire ash input can induce lethal yet previously unexplored physiological disturbances in fish and highlights the complex interaction with warmer temperatures typical of wildfire-scarred landscapes.

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Chemical characteristics of wildfire ash across the globe and their environmental and socio-economic implications

Cited by 27 publications

References 84 publications

Wildfire Ashes from the Wildland-Urban Interface Alter Vibrio vulnificus Growth and Gene Expression

Wildfire Ashes from the Wildland-Urban Interface Alter Vibrio vulnificus Growth and Gene Expression

Combustion Completeness and Sample Location Determine Wildfire Ash Leachate Chemistry

Fish Blood Response to Ash-Induced Environmental Alkalinization, and their Implications to Wildfire-Scarred Watersheds

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