Effects of climate change and wildfire on soil loss in the Southern Rockies Ecoregion

Litschert, S. E.; Theobald, David M.; Brown, Thomas C.

doi:10.1016/j.catena.2014.01.007

Cited by 34 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…We modelled annual soil loss using a geographic information system (GIS) based implementation (Theobald et al 2010) of the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), which estimates annual soil loss (A) in megagrams per hectare per year as the product of five subfactors: rainfall runoff erosivity (R), soil erodibility (K), length and slope (LS), cover (C), and support practices (P) (Renard et al 1997). This approach was previously used to estimate wildfire-related erosion in the Southern Rockies for individual wildfire events (Miller et al 2003;Norman 2014, 2015) and for future wildfire and climate scenarios (Litschert et al 2014). We chose RUSLE because of its computational efficiency at modelling erosion for multiple treatment scenarios over large landscapes.…”

Section: Hillslope Erosionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prioritising fuels reduction for water supply protection

Gannon

Wei

MacDonald

et al. 2019

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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Concerns over wildfire impacts to water supplies have motivated efforts to mitigate risk by reducing forest fuels. Methods to assess fuel treatment effects and prioritise their placement are needed to guide risk mitigation efforts. We present a fuel treatment optimisation model to minimise risk to multiple water supplies based on constraints for treatment feasibility and cost. Risk is quantified as the expected sediment impact costs to water supplies by combining measures of fire likelihood and behaviour, erosion, sediment transport and water supply vulnerability. We demonstrate the model’s utility for prioritising fuel treatments in two large watersheds in Colorado, USA, that are critical for municipal water supply. Our results indicate that wildfire risk to water supplies can be substantially reduced by treating a small portion of the watersheds that have dense, fire-prone forests on steep slopes that drain to water supply infrastructure. Our results also show that the cost of fuel treatments outweighs the expected cost savings from reduced sediment inputs owing to the low probability of fuel treatments encountering wildfire and the high cost of thinning forests. This highlights the need to expand use of more cost-effective treatments, like prescribed fire, and to identify fuel treatment projects that benefit multiple resources.

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Section: Hillslope Erosionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prioritising fuels reduction for water supply protection

Gannon

Wei

MacDonald

et al. 2019

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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“…Though not directly related to the analysis of rainfall intensity, it is worth noting that the I 30 intensity index is a key parameter in the revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model. Examples of applications to soil erosion include Brooks et al [27] estimating erosion in northern Australia, Litschert et al [28] and Kampf et al [26] analysing post-wildfire erosion, Panagos et al [29] exploring soil loss rates across Europe, and by Lee et al [30] mapping soil erosion rates in Korea. In work on soil erosion, I 30 is commonly combined with estimates of rainfall kinetic energy to create the hybrid variable EI 30 , which is designed to parameterise rainfall erosivity.…”

Section: Area Of Application Of I 30 and Related Indexes Referencementioning

confidence: 99%

How Is the Intensity of Rainfall Events Best Characterised? A Brief Critical Review and Proposed New Rainfall Intensity Index for Application in the Study of Landsurface Processes

Dunkerley

2020

Water

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In many studies of landsurface processes, the intensity of rainfall events is expressed with clock-period indexes such as I30, the wettest 30-minute interval within a rainfall event. Problematically, the value of I30 cannot be estimated for rainfall events shorter than 30 min, excluding many intense convective storms. Further, it represents a diminishing proportion of increasingly long rainfall events, declining to <2% of the duration of a 30-hour event but representing 25% of the duration of a two-hour event. Here, a new index termed EDf5 is proposed: It is the rainfall depth in the wettest 5% of the event duration. This can be derived for events of any duration. Exploratory determinations of EDf5 are presented for two Australian locations with contrasting rainfall climatologies—one arid and one wet tropical. The I30 index was similar at both sites (7.7 and 7.9 mm h−1) and was unable to differentiate between them. In contrast, EDf5 at the arid site was 7.4 mm h−1, whilst at the wet tropical site, it was 3.8 mm h−1. Thus, the EDf5 index indicated a greater concentration of rain at the arid site where convective storms occurred (i.e., the intensity sustained for 5% of event duration at that site is higher). The EDf5 index can be applied to short, intense events that can readily be included in the analysis of event-based rainfall intensity. I30 therefore appears to offer less discriminatory power and consequently may be of less value in the investigation of rainfall characteristics that drive many important landsurface processes.

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“…Other important factors include rainfall amounts and intensities as well as topographic factors including slope length, steepness, shape, and convergence [Moody and Martin, 2009;Shakesby and Doerr, 2006;Miller et al, 2011]. Hillslope soil erosion is often dramatically increased by wildland fire and can be estimated for watersheds over a large geographic extent with existing geographic information system-based models including the Geo-spatial interface for the Water Erosion Prediction Project (GeoWEPP [Laflen et al, 1997;Renschler et al, 2002]) [Miller et al, 2011;Litschert et al, 2014;Sankey et al, 2015]. Modeled erosion rates can, in turn, be summarized to estimate watershed sediment yield for a given time period (e.g., 1 year) postfire [Miller et al, 2011;Sankey et al, 2015].…”

Section: Postfire Sediment Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate, wildfire, and erosion ensemble foretells more sediment in western USA watersheds

Sankey

Kreitler²,

Hawbaker

et al. 2017

Geophysical Research Letters

118

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The area burned annually by wildfires is expected to increase worldwide due to climate change. Burned areas increase soil erosion rates within watersheds, which can increase sedimentation in downstream rivers and reservoirs. However, which watersheds will be impacted by future wildfires is largely unknown. Using an ensemble of climate, fire, and erosion models, we show that postfire sedimentation is projected to increase for nearly nine tenths of watersheds by >10% and for more than one third of watersheds by >100% by the 2041 to 2050 decade in the western USA. The projected increases are statistically significant for more than eight tenths of the watersheds. In the western USA, many human communities rely on water from rivers and reservoirs that originates in watersheds where sedimentation is projected to increase. Increased sedimentation could negatively impact water supply and quality for some communities, in addition to affecting stream channel stability and aquatic ecosystems.

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Effects of climate change and wildfire on soil loss in the Southern Rockies Ecoregion

Cited by 34 publications

References 39 publications

Prioritising fuels reduction for water supply protection

Prioritising fuels reduction for water supply protection

How Is the Intensity of Rainfall Events Best Characterised? A Brief Critical Review and Proposed New Rainfall Intensity Index for Application in the Study of Landsurface Processes

Climate, wildfire, and erosion ensemble foretells more sediment in western USA watersheds

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