Climate Change–Fueled Wildfires Could Double Erosion in the West
The drier the American West gets, the more prone the region becomes to wildfires. And thanks to climate change, record-breaking droughts like the one that’s gripped California for the past four years are likely to become more frequent and more severe.
Now, researchers at the United States Geological Survey have found that more wildfires could mean soil erosion in some states could double by 2050. That extra dirt could end up clogging rivers, limiting water supplies, and worsening water quality for residents of the West.
“It’s a pretty dramatic increase in sediment [entering streams],” said USGS geologist Joel Sankey. “The sediment can have a wide range of effects on a lot of watersheds, many of which are headwater streams and important for water supply in the West.”
Soil erosion increases in areas hit by wildfires because the blazes remove the protective vegetation that holds it in place. When rains come, more dirt ends up traveling down streams and rivers. That sediment can ruin water quality, impacting wildlife. It also makes managing or trying to restore watersheds more difficult and expensive.
RELATED: The Price of Climate Change: Wildfires Are Burning Through the National Forest Budget
In California, a state already running dangerously low on groundwater supplies, increased erosion could end up choking reservoirs and limiting river flows upstream from reaching urban centers and residents’ taps.
Sankey says the projections in the study could show communities and city managers what watersheds they are dependent on and how vulnerable those watersheds are to increased wildfires, erosion, and sedimentation.
“They could then work with hydrologists and engineers to answer the question for their individual community of whether their local infrastructure is equipped to handle projected changes,” Sankey said.
One of the big tasks for communities throughout the West is to develop better forest management plans that protect forests upstream and make them less susceptible to wildfires. At the Lake Tahoe Basin—a 150,000-acre area around the famously blue lake—U.S. Forest Service managers have implemented controlled burns and intentional forest thinning to suppress wildfires in the region.
Sankey’s team made projections based on three climate models with varying degrees of temperature rise, three wildfire scenarios, and different erosion models.
“We feel we have a nice combination of models to do these forecasts,” Sankey said.
He and his colleagues presented the paper on Wednesday at a Geological Society of America meeting in Baltimore and are in the process of submitting the paper to a peer-reviewed journal.
Related stories on TakePart:
• The Innovative Technology That Might Save California From Its Drought
• Coca-Cola Leaves It to Beavers to Fight the Drought
• The Wildfire Season Is Getting Longer—Everywhere
Original article from TakePart
