Abstract
The research was carried out in one of the most important suburban forests of Greece, after a wildfire (2021). The objectives include the estimation of the annual soil erosion, the effect of extremely intense and consecutive rainfalls on erosion process, the correlation among erosion, rainfall intensity and other factors. To monitor soil erosion in burned and unburned areas, erosion measurements were obtained installing silt fences. The results showed that the main factor affecting annual erosion is the presence or not of vegetation. Rainfall intensity is a major determinant of erosion, especially when it exceeds 6–7 mm/30 min. However, it was revealed that erosion does not increase significantly in burned areas, despite the increase of rainfall intensity. In unburned area the erosion was significantly increased, above a rainfall intensity threshold (>10 mm/30 min). For the first time, it was shown that in cases of two consecutive and very heavy rainfalls, the second and more intense rain caused significantly lower erosion than the first one. A 690 % average increase in R factor during the 2nd storm, showed an average decrease in soil erosion of 20 % (burned and unburned areas). The present study also revealed that the high increase of R factor in the 2nd post-fire year did not trigger a significant increase of soil erosion, since the extreme erosive events occurred very close to each other in time. These findings highlight that the use of R factor in RUSLE, to calculate the annual erosion in burned or unburned areas, detached from the respective field data establishment to validate the model, involves high uncertainties, which could possibly result in wrong erosion rates calculations. Researches and stakeholders, who use the R factor in erosion modeling, should previously examine in detail the exact dates of erosive events, before the implementation of the erosion model.
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