Impact Of Wildfires Research Articles

The high content of mineral-free organic matter in soils increases their vulnerability to wildfire in humid-temperate zones

Under a new scenario of global warming, in which wildfire is predicted to affect new forest areas in temperate and boreal climates, information about the properties of soil organic matter (SOM) may be crucial for assessing the impact of wildfire. Unlike Mediterranean soils, the soils in temperate and boreal areas are richer in SOM in the form of unprotected, mineral-free SOM, which is presumably particularly sensitive to heating.To address this topic, three recently burned, SOM-rich Atlantic forest soils, in which different levels of soil burn severity were distinguished, were selected for study. Soil organic matter density fractions (free particulate OM [fPOM], occluded particulate OM [oPOM] and mineral-associated OM [MAF]) and different particle size fractions of MAF (200–63, 63–20 and <20 µm) were obtained and analyzed by thermal analysis (DSC-TG) and solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (13C CPMAS NMR). The effect of heating on SOM was also studied in relation to the changes observed in the water repellency and aggregate size of the soil.Heating led to important losses of the three SOM density fractions, particularly the fPOM. The SOM remaining after fire was thus dominated by oPOM and MAF. Although recalcitrance increased in all physical SOM fractions, the effect was greatest in the fPOM, which can be attributed to differences in the combustion conditions and to the composition of these OM pools.Loss and changes in the composition of fPOM explained the reduction in water repellency usually observed in these soils after intense heating. The loss of MAF in severely burned soils seems to be the main driver of the aggregate breakdown. Depletion of this SOM fraction may affect the resilience of the system because of the low rate of replenishment. Although the high degree of recalcitrance of mineral-protected OM may be important for C sequestration in soil, the present findings revealed that the potential effect is relatively small.

Conservation status of native plant hybrids in the British Virgin Islands.

BackgroundHybridization is an evolutionary event present in the natural world. Several studies suggest that natural hybridization is an important process in plant evolution, creating new genetic combinations which can play a vital role in speciation (Soltis and Soltis 2009, Soltis 2013, Neri et al. 2017, Taylor and Larson 2019). Therefore, it is important to understand and protect naturally occurring hybrids, conserving their ecological novelties and new traits, such as the ability to explore new niches, different from those of the parental species (Soltis 2013, Supple and Shapiro 2018).The British Virgin Islands (BVI) is a UK Overseas Territory situated in the Caribbean biodiversity hotspot (Myers et al. 2000). To date, three natural hybrids are known to occur within this territory: Tillandsia × lineatispica Mez, Anthurium × selloanum K.Koch and Coccoloba krugii × C. uvifera R.A.Howard (Howard 1957, Acevedo-Rodriguez and Strong 2005, Acevedo-Rodriguez and Strong 2012).Tillandsia × lineatispica is endemic to the Puerto Rican Bank, occurring in Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands (USVI) and the British Virgin Islands with an extent of occurrence estimated to be 3,390 km2 and a limited number of locations. The suitable habitat for this hybrid is declining mainly due to the negative impacts of feral ungulates, development for tourism and residential infrastructure and the impact of human-induced wildfires. In addition, it is suspected that the global population does not exceed 10,000 individuals with the largest subpopulation on Beef Island in the BVI thought to have no more than 1,000 mature individuals. This hybrid is therefore evaluated as Vulnerable, based on IUCN Red List Criteria, B1a(iii)+2b(iii) + C2a(i).Anthurium × selloanum is an endemic hybrid to BVI and USVI with a very restricted extent of occurrence which was estimated to range between 103 km2 and 207 km2 and an area of occupancy which was estimated to range between 56 km2 and 188 km2 and a limited number of locations. The suitable habitat of this species is declining mainly due to the negative impacts of feral ungulates, development for tourism and residential infrastructure and the negative impact of recreation activities in protected areas. This species is therefore evaluated as Endangered, based on IUCN Red List Criteria B1a+ b(iii) + B2a+b(iii).Coccoloba krugii × C. uvifera is native to the BVI, USVI, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Anguilla. It is estimated to have an extent of occurrence of 89,412 km2. This value exceeds the threshold for any threatened category. Despite an observed continuing decline of suitable habitat for this species, which is being degraded mainly through ongoing development pressures, this species occurs in more than 10 locations. It is therefore assessed as Least Concern (LC).New informationIn this paper, we discuss the conservation status of all the known, naturally occurring, native hybrids in the the British Virgin Islands and we provide distribution data, including new records, from across these hybrid species ranges. Although conservation assessments of hybrids are out of the scope of the published IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN Standards and Petitions Committee 2019), we use the IUCN Red List Criteria and Categories (version 3.1) to establish an equivalent conservation status of these hybrids and discuss conservation action due to the potential evolutionary importance of these naturally occurring hybrids. These assessments provide the necessary baseline information for prioritising species conservation and making informed management decisions, such as establishing the BVI's Tropical Important Plant Areas (TIPAS) network (Sanchez et al. 2019).

Statistical aerosol properties associated with fire events from 2002 to 2019 and a case analysis in 2019 over Australia

Abstract. Wildfires are an important contributor to atmospheric aerosols in Australia and could significantly affect the regional and even global climate. This study investigates the impact of fire events on aerosol properties along with the long-range transport of biomass-burning aerosol over Australia using multi-year measurements from Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) at 10 sites over Australia, a satellite dataset derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP), reanalysis data from Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2), and back-trajectories from the Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model. The fire count, fire radiative power (FRP), and aerosol optical depth (AOD) showed distinct and consistent interannual variations, with high values during September–February (biomass-burning period, BB period) and low values during March–August (non-biomass-burning period, non-BB period) every year. Strong correlation (0.62) was found between FRP and AOD over Australia. Furthermore, the correlation coefficient between AOD and fire count was much higher (0.63–0.85) during October–January than other months (−0.08 to 0.47). Characteristics of Australian aerosols showed pronounced differences between the BB period and non-BB period. AOD values significantly increased and fine-mode aerosol dominated during the BB period, especially in northern and southeastern Australia. Carbonaceous aerosol was the main contributor to total aerosols during the BB period, especially in September–December when carbonaceous aerosol contributed the most (30.08 %–42.91 %). Aerosol size distributions showed a bimodal character, with both fine and coarse aerosol particles generally increasing during the BB period. The megafires during the BB period of 2019/2020 further demonstrated the significant impact of wildfires on aerosol properties, such as the extreme increase in AOD for most of southeastern Australia, the dominance of fine particle aerosols, and the significant increase in carbonaceous and dust aerosols in southeastern and central Australia, respectively. Moreover, smoke was found to be the dominant aerosol type detected at heights from 2.5 to 12 km in southeastern Australia in December 2019 and at heights from roughly 6.2 to 12 km in January 2020. In contrast, dust was detected more frequently at heights from 2 to 5 km in November 2019 and January and February 2020. A case study emphasized that the transport of biomass-burning aerosols from wildfire plumes in eastern and southern Australia significantly impacted the aerosol loading, aerosol particle size, and aerosol type of central Australia.

Hydrological regimes in a tropical valley of New Caledonia (SW Pacific): Impacts of wildfires and invasive fauna

AbstractIn New Caledonia wildfires and invasive mammals (deer and wild pigs) constitute the major agents of land surface degradation. Our study reveals the linkage between land cover and water balance on the northeast coast of New Caledonia (2400 mm annual rainfall) located on a micaschist basement. The hydrological regime of characteristic and representative land surfaces is assessed using a 1‐year record from three 100 m2 plots each, located in a forest area degraded by an invasive fauna, in a woody savannah which is regularly burned, and in a healthy forest area. The three plots present highly contrasting hydrological regimes, with annual and maximum runoff/rain ratios during a rain event of, respectively, 0.82, 0.16, 0.03, and 2.7, 0.7, 0.2, for the degraded forest, the savannah and the healthy forest. Such results suggest that subsurface flow originating from the contributing area above the degraded forest plot should exfiltrate inside the plot. A conceptual model for the degraded forest plot shows that water exfiltrating inside the plot represents 61% of the observed runoff. In savannahs, water should mainly be transferred downstream by subsurface flow within a thick organic soil layer limited by an impervious clay layer at a 20–30 cm depth. Savannahs are generally located above forests and generate the transfer of rainwater to downslope forests. Exfiltration into the forests can be the result of this transfer and depends on the thickness and permeability of the forest topsoils and on topographic gradients. Water exfiltration in forest areas highly degraded by pigs and deer enhances erosion and increases further degradation. It probably also limits percolation in the areas located downstream by increasing the amount of superficial runoff concentrated in gullies.

Orchestrating performance of healthcare networks subjected to the compound events of natural disasters and pandemic

The current COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the vulnerability of healthcare systems worldwide. When combined with natural disasters, pandemics can further strain an already exhausted healthcare system. To date, frameworks for quantifying the collective effect of the two events on hospitals are nonexistent. Moreover, analytical methods for capturing the dynamic spatiotemporal variability in capacity and demand of the healthcare system posed by different stressors are lacking. Here, we investigate the combined impact of wildfire and pandemic on a network of hospitals. We combine wildfire data with varying courses of the spread of COVID-19 to evaluate the effectiveness of different strategies for managing patient demand. We show that losing access to medical care is a function of the relative occurrence time between the two events and is substantial in some cases. By applying viable mitigation strategies and optimizing resource allocation, patient outcomes could be substantially improved under the combined hazards.

Fuel management operations planning in fire management: A bilevel optimisation approach

Elevated fuel loads represent a wildfire hazard in a landscape. Reducing fuel load is one mitigation strategy commonly employed to decrease the severity and impact of wildfires. The planning of such fuel management operations, however, represents a complicated decision problem, which includes multiple sources of uncertainty. In this paper, a problem for fuel treatment planning is presented, formulated, and solved. The optimisation model identifies the best subset of units in the landscape to be treated to minimise the impact of the worst-case wildfire. Due to its size, which would make it intractable for realistic instances, an ad hoc exact solution algorithm has been devised. Extensive computational testing on randomly generated instances illustrates that the proposed approach is very successful at solving the problem. Finally, the algorithm is applied to a case study on a landscape in Andalusia, Spain, which shows the capabilities of the proposed approach in addressing a real-world problem.

Tracing Riverine Particulate Black Carbon Sources in Xijiang River Basin: Insight from Stable Isotopic Composition and Bayesian Mixing Model

Rivers transport abundant terrestrial carbon into the ocean, constituting a fundamental channel between terrestrial carbon pools and oceanic carbon pools. The black carbon (BC) derived from biomass and fossil fuel combustion is an important component of the riverine organic carbon flux. A recent study estimated that approximately 17 ~ 37 Tg C of BC was delivered in suspended particle phase by rivers per year. The particulate black carbon (PBC) in river systems has rarely been investigated and its controlling factors have remained largely unknown. The stable isotopic compositions of PBC in Xijiang River during the wet season are reported in this study. We found that the PBC/particulate organic carbon (POC) ratio in Xijiang River was slightly higher than that of other rivers, which may be a result of the mobility difference between POC and PBC, aerosol BC input and riverine biogenic effect. We found that the isotopic compositions of PBC depleted 13C compared with those of POC and dissolved organic carbon (DOC). This divergence may be derived from the fractionation during soil organic matter production and biomass burning or fossil fuel combustion BC particles input with different isotopic compositions. The MixSIAR model indicated that most of the PBC in the study area was derived from fossil fuel combustion (~80%), the contribution of C4 plants burning was limited. Our result highlights that in the watershed without wildfire impact, the aeolian transport and deposition of the particles from fuel oil, coal combustion, and vehicle exhaust could significantly affect the BC flux in rivers.

A robust decision-support method based on optimization and simulation for wildfire resilience in highly renewable power systems

Wildfires can pose a major threat to the secure operation of power networks. Chile, California, and Australia have suffered from recent wildfires that have induced considerable power supply cuts. Further, as power systems move to a significant integration of variable renewable energy sources, successfully managing the impact of wildfires on the power supply can become even more challenging due to the joint uncertainty in wildfire trajectories and the power injections from wind and solar farms. Motivated by this, this paper develops a practical decision-support approach that concatenates a stochastic wildfire simulation method with an attacker-defender model that aims to find a worst-case realization for (i) transmission line and generator contingencies, out of those that can potentially be affected by a given wildfire scenario, and for (ii) wind and solar power trajectories, based on a max-min structure where the inner min problem represents a best adaptive response on generator dispatch actions. Further, this paper proposes an evaluation framework to assess the power supply security of various power system topology configurations, under the assumption of limited transmission switching capabilities, and based on the simulation of several wildfire evolution scenarios. Extensive computational experiments are carried out on two representations of the Chilean power network with up to 278 buses, showing the practical effectiveness of the proposed approach for enhancing wildfire resilience in highly renewable power systems.

Mapping Soil Burn Severity at Very High Spatial Resolution from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The evaluation of the effect of burn severity on forest soils is essential to determine the impact of wildfires on a range of key ecological processes, such as nutrient cycling and vegetation recovery. The main objective of this study was to assess the potentiality of different spectral products derived from RGB and multispectral imagery collected by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at very high spatial resolution for discriminating spatial variations in soil burn severity after a heterogeneous wildfire. In the case study, we chose a mixed-severity fire that occurred in the northwest (NW) of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) in 2019 that affected 82.74 ha covered by three different types of forests, each dominated by Pinus pinaster, Pinus sylvestris, and Quercus pyrenaica. We evaluated soil burn severity in the field 1 month after the fire using the Composite Burn Soil Index (CBSI), as well as a pool of five individual indicators (ash depth, ash cover, fine debris cover, coarse debris cover, and unstructured soil depth) of easy interpretation. Simultaneously, we operated an unmanned aerial vehicle to obtain RGB and multispectral postfire images, allowing for deriving six spectral indices. Then, we explored the relationship between spectral indices and field soil burn severity metrics by means of univariate proportional odds regression models. These models were used to predict CBSI categories, and classifications were validated through confusion matrices. Results indicated that multispectral indices outperformed RGB indices when assessing soil burn severity, being more strongly related to CBSI than to individual indicators. The Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) was the best-performing spectral index for modelling CBSI (R2cv = 0.69), showing the best ability to predict CBSI categories (overall accuracy = 0.83). Among the individual indicators of soil burn severity, ash depth was the one that achieved the best results, specifically when it was modelled from NDWI (R2cv = 0.53). This work provides a useful background to design quick and accurate assessments of soil burn severity to be implemented immediately after the fire, which is a key factor to identify priority areas for emergency actions after forest fires.

Wildfire Front Monitoring with Multiple UAVs using Deep Q-Learning

Wildfires destroy thousands of hectares every summer all over the globe. To provide an effective response and to mitigate wildfires impact, firefighters require a real-time monitoring of the fire front. This paper proposes a cooperative reinforcement learning (RL) framework that allows a team of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to learn how to monitor a fire front. In the literature, independent Q-learners were proposed to solve a wildfire monitoring task with two UAVs. Here we propose a framework that can be easily extended to a larger number of UAVs. Our framework builds on two methods: multiple single trained Q-learning agents (MSTA) and value decomposition networks (VDN). MSTA trains a single UAV controller, which is then "copied" to each of the UAVs in the team. In contrast, VDN trains agents to learn how to cooperate. We benchmarked in simulations our two considered methods – MSTA and VDN – against two state-of-the-art approaches: independent Q-learners and a joint Q-learner. Simulation results show that our considered methods outperform state-of-the-art approaches in a wildfire front monitoring task with up to 9 fixed-wing and multi-copter UAVs.

Wildfires: Identification of a new suite of aromatic polycarboxylic acids in ash and surface water

Ash and surface water samples collected after wildfires in four different geographical locations (California, Colorado, Kansas and Alberta) were analyzed. The ash samples were leached with deionized water, and leachates were concentrated by solid phase extraction and analyzed by liquid chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry. In addition, three surface water samples and a lysimeter water sample were collected from watersheds recently affected by fire in California and Colorado, and analyzed in similar fashion. A suite of benzene polycarboxylic acids (BPCAs), with two and three carboxyl groups and their corresponding isomers were identified for the first time in both ash leachates and water samples. Also found was a pyridine carboxylic acid (PCA), 3,5-pyridine dicarboxylic acid. Furthermore, putative identifications were made for other carboxylated aromatic acids: quinolinic, naphthalenic, and benzofuranoic acid carboxylates. The wildfire ashes, a controlled wood ash, and post-fire surface water samples suggest that burned woody material, along with surface plant-material and heated o-horizon soil organic matter, contribute to both BPCAs and PCAs in runoff. This study is the first of its kind to identify this suite of aromatic acids in wildfire ash and surface water samples. These data make an important contribution to the nature of dissolved organic matter from wildfire and are useful to better understand the impact of wildfire on water quality and drinking water sources.

That First Wildfire

In this essay, Alex Kuo looks at the impact of wildfires through his own experience working for the U.S. Forest Service on a fire crew. Just a high school graduate newly immigrated to the States, Kuo describes his workday at St. Joe National Forest in the late 60s, as well as the various places he was moved to and the notorious fires fought across the western United States. Kuo's essay charts all the logistical tasks and costs of fighting wildfires.

Networks within networks: scaling response operations in the lightning complex fires in northern california, August 2020

Wildfire risk has increased dramatically in California over more than two decades, 2000 - 2021, reflecting the intense impact of climate change on the state’s environmental and ecological systems. Most urgent is the impact of wildfire at the wildland-urban-interface (WUI), and the challenge to prevent cascading disaster for regions connected via interdependent lifelines of transportation, communications, electrical power, water, sewer, and gas line distribution systems that characterize geographic regions. To what extent do large, multi-organizational, multi-jurisdictional networks of organizations learn from experience and adapt their performance in response to the dynamic conditions of an actual extreme event? This article identifies four types of networks operating in the 2020 Lightning Complex Wildfires in northern California and documents the rapid escalation of risk and costs based on a preliminary analysis of the 209 incident reports filed by California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) for the SCU Fire that engulfed large sections of five counties in the southeastern San Francisco Bay Region. The article concludes that Interagency Incident Management Networks provide essential intelligence to support local management of operations in the dynamic context of wildfire risk.

Impact of simulated wildfire on disinfection byproduct formation potential

AbstractWildfires are complex phenomena that have served a vital role in ecosystem function for millennia. However, thermal alterations to dissolved organic matter's (DOM) solubility and chemical features can change disinfection byproduct (DBP) formation dynamics. Physicochemical changes to DOM are influenced by several factors, the most prominent being heating temperature. In this study, mineral soil samples were collected from fire‐prone areas, artificially heated in a muffle furnace to simulate wildfire heating, and leached. As heating temperature increased, chloroform and dichloroacetic acid yields decreased and increased, respectively. Of particular interest was the stimulation of dichloroacetonitrile, a highly toxic and unregulated DBP, at moderate heating temperatures. To demonstrate further insight into the chemical attributes of wildfire‐impacted DOM, optical properties were used as proxy measurements. This work provides water utilities with information on how wildfires can alter DBP formation potential, and a means to investigate correlations between intrinsic optical measurements and DBP yields.

Wildfire-Induced CO Plume Observations From NAST-I During the FIREX-AQ Field Campaign.

The fire influence on regional to global environments and air quality (FIREX-AQ) field campaign was conducted during August 2019 to investigate the impact of wildfire and biomass smoke on air quality and weather in the continental United States. One of the campaign’s scientific objectives was to estimate the composition of emissions from wildfires. Ultraspectrally resolved infrared radiance measurements from aircraft and/or satellite observations contain information on tropospheric carbon monoxide (CO) as well as other trace species present in fire emissions. A methodology for retrieving tropospheric CO from such remotely sensed spectral data has been developed for the National Airborne Sounder Testbed-Interferometer (NAST-I) and is applied herein. Retrievals based on NAST-I measurements are used to demonstrate CO retrieval capability and characterize fire emissions. NAST-I remotely sensed CO from ER-2 flights are evaluated with concurrent in situ measurements from the differential absorption carbon monoxide measurements flown on the NASA DC-8 aircraft. Enhanced CO emissions along with plume evolution and transport from the fire ground site locations were captured by moderate vertical and high horizontal resolution observations obtained from the NAST-I IR spectrometer; these were intercompared and verified by the cloud physics lidar and the enhanced MODIS airborne simulator also hosted on the NASA ER-2 aircraft. This study will be beneficial to the science community for studying wildfire-related topics and understanding similar remotely sensed observations from satellites, along with helping to address the broader FIREX-AQ experiment objectives of investigating the impact of fires on air quality and climate.

Long-term fire effects on vegetation and topsoil properties in beech forests of Manjaca Mountain (western Bosnia and Herzegovina)

Wildfires are an important driver of land degradation, with detrimental impacts on soil properties, usually leading to decreasing soil fertility and erosion, which affect vegetation recovery. This study investigates the long-term impact of wildfires on topsoil horizons and vegetation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where land degradation is causing significant economic and ecological losses. Ten years after a wildfire, 12 plots were installed in areas affected by low- and medium-severity fire, and in unburned areas. Morphological, physical and chemical soil properties were explored on each plot, together with vegetation cover (number and cover of species). Soil organic matter, carbon, nitrogen and available phosphorus contents in medium- and low-severity fire affected plots are approximately half of those recorded in unburned plots, showing detrimental long-term impacts on soil fertility. Soil cation exchange capacity, pH and available potassium did not show significant differences between fire- and non-fire-affected plots. The number of plant species in medium-severity fire-affected plots is significantly lower than in low-severity and unburned plots. Differentiated plant groups are led by herbaceous (ground-breaking and weed) species. This study shows that wildfires can have long-term impacts on topsoil horizons and vegetation in limestone areas, threatening the sustainability of forest ecosystems.

Impact of wildfires on SO2 detoxification mechanisms in leaves of oak and beech trees.

Frequency and intensity of wildfire occurrences are dramatically increasing worldwide due to global climate change, having a devastating effect on the entire ecosystem including plants. Moreover, distribution of fire-smoke can influence the natural environment over very long distances, i.e. hundreds of kilometres. Dry plant matter contains 0.1-0.9% (w/w) sulphur, which is mainly released during combustion into the atmosphere as sulphur dioxide (SO2) resulting in local concentrations of up to 3000nL L-1. SO2 is a highly hazardous gas, which enters plants mostly via the stomata. Toxic sulphite is formed inside the leaves due to conversion of SO2. Plants as sessile organisms cannot escape from threats, why they evolved an impressive diversity of molecular defence mechanisms. In the present study, two recent wildfires in Germany were evaluated to analyse the effect of SO2 released into the atmosphere on deciduous trees: the Meppen peat fire in 2018 and the forest fire close to Luebtheen in 2019. Collected leaf material from beech (Fagus sylvatica) and oak (Quercus robur) was examined with respect to detoxification of sulphur surplus due to the exposure to elevated SO2. An induced stress reaction in both species was indicated by a 1.5-fold increase in oxidized glutathione. In beech leaves, the enzymatic activities of the sulphite detoxification enzymes sulphite oxidase and apoplastic peroxidases were increased 5-fold and a trend of sulphate accumulation was observed. In contrast, oaks did not regulate these enzymes during smoke exposure, however, the constitutive activity is 10-fold and 3-fold higher than in beech. These results show for the first time sulphite detoxification strategies of trees in situ after natural smoke exposure. Beech and oak trees survived short-term SO2 fumigation due to exclusion of toxic gases and different oxidative detoxification strategies. Beeches use efficient upregulation of oxidative sulphite detoxification enzymes, while oaks hold a constitutively high enzyme-pool available.

The impact of wildfires on the Lake Skadar/Shkodra environment

Every year wildfires bring damages to the environment of Montenegro, and, in particular, to the Lake Skadar/Shkodra environment. Wildfires are caused by dry and hot weather which is established yearly from July to September, and is likely linked to the regional climate change. In this study we used high resolution optical imagery (OLI Landsat-8 and MSI Sentinel-2A, -2B) to analyze concentrations of suspended particulate matter and chlorophyll-a in Lakes Skadar/Shkodra and Šas in order to understand the potential impact of wildfires on the lake ecosystem. The surface of burnt areas was calculated for different regions around Lakes Skadar/Shkodra and Šas. Our data showed that SPM values in lake water increase during wildfire. The highest SPM value was observed in the area around the mouth of the left branch of River Morača where the largest areas affected by fires were observed. The SPM concentration in water of Lakes Skadar/Shkodra and Šas generally decreased after rainstorms. The need for implementation of a comprehensive fire management program that includes monitoring of impact of fires on aquatic ecosystems and their biota is emphasized.

Wildfire dynamics and impacts on a tropical Andean oak forest

Wildfires have increasingly damaged Andean tropical forests. However, both a poor understanding of wildfire dynamics and ecosystem response limits awareness about the magnitude of the problem and design management strategies. We estimate the impacts and significant drivers of wildfires by dating and mapping recent wildfires in an Andean tropical forest area, the Iguaque mountains. A large part of Iguaque hosts a population of the only Quercus species in South America, Quercus humboldtii. We used remote-sensing, official reports and social mapping to reconstruct the recent history of wildfires and change in oak forest patches in Iguaque. Between 1990 and 2017, 25 wildfires were recorded, with fire intervals between 4 and 21 years. These events burned 28.4% of the Iguaque mountains and showed a significant increasing trend in extent. Wildfires mostly occurred in the south, during the driest months, and their number and extent showed substantial interannual variations related to El Niño–Southern Oscillation cycles. Wildfires contributed to a 45% reduction in oak forests along with the fragmentation of existing populations. Our study presents evidence of the extent and impact of wildfires in Iguaque and provides new insights on fire dynamics in Andean tropical forests.

Determining The Impacts of Wildfires on Peak Flood Flows in High Mountain Watersheds

Determining The Impacts of Wildfires on Peak Flood Flows in High Mountain Watersheds