Wildfire impacts on western United States snowpacks

Abstract

Mountain snowpacks provide 53–78% of water used for irrigation, municipalities, and industrial consumption in the western United States. Snowpacks serve as natural reservoirs during the winter months and play an essential role in water storage for human consumption and ecosystem functions. However, wildfires across the West are increasing in severity, size, and frequency, progressively putting snowpacks at risk as they burn further into the seasonal snow zone. Following a fire, snow disappears 4–23 days earlier and melt rates increase by up to 57%. In a high burn severity fire in the Oregon Cascades, the black carbon and charred woody debris shed from burned trees onto the snowpack decreased the snow albedo by 40%. Canopy cover loss causes a 60% increase in solar radiation reaching the snow surface. Together, these effects produce a 200% increase in net shortwave radiation absorbed by the snowpack. This mini-review synthesizes the implications of wildfire for snow hydrology in mountainous watersheds with the primary aim to characterize wildfires' varied influences on the volume and timing of water resources across time scales (daily to decadal), space (plot to watershed) and burn severity (low to high). The increase in the geographical overlap between fire and snow poses unique challenges for managing snow-dominated watersheds and highlights deficiencies in research and operational snow hydrologic modeling, emphasizing the need for additional field and remote-sensing observations and model experiments.