Scientists' warning on extreme wildfire risks to water supply

Robinne, François; Hallema, Dennis W.; Bladon, Kevin D.; Flannigan, Mike D.; Boisramé, Gabrielle; Bréthaut, Christian; Doerr, Stefan H.; Baldassarre, Giuliano Di; Gallagher, Louise; Hohner, Amanda K.; Khan, Stuart J.; Kinoshita, A. M.; Mordecai, Rua S.; Nunes, João Pedro; Nyman, Petter; Santín, Cristina; Sheridan, Gary; Stoof, Cathelijne R.; Thompson, Matthew P.; Waddington, J. M.; Wei, Yu

doi:10.1002/hyp.14086

Cited by 67 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…However, the temporal distribution of studies revealed a disproportionate increase in the publications during the last decade. Concern about the risks of the increased frequency and severity of wild res to water supply is growing across the scienti c community (Robinne et al 2021). The widespread interest over recent years on the impacts of re is related to climate-associated perturbations, such as high temperatures and prolonged droughts, where substantial increases in the probability of wild res and area of burned vegetation are expected (Jolly et al 2015;Robinne et al 2021).…”

Section: Global Research Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Concern about the risks of the increased frequency and severity of wild res to water supply is growing across the scienti c community (Robinne et al 2021). The widespread interest over recent years on the impacts of re is related to climate-associated perturbations, such as high temperatures and prolonged droughts, where substantial increases in the probability of wild res and area of burned vegetation are expected (Jolly et al 2015;Robinne et al 2021). Impacts of re intensity on freshwater ecosystems based on climate change projections include alterations on the structure and resilience of these environments, recreational use of water bodies, and drinking water treatment (Loiselle et al 2020).…”

Section: Global Research Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An extensive array of ecosystem services may be affected by re, among which water quantity, soil retention, pest management and natural hazard regulation have been largely considered (Vukomanovic and Steelman 2019). For freshwater ecosystem services, major concerns of the impacts of re are focused on water availability and demands for human requirements (e.g., Hallema et al 2018;Robinne et al 2021). Constant declines in water quantity and quality have become a growing global challenge to human health and sustainable development, especially under the projected drought scenarios associated with climate change and the exponential population growth (Baggio et al 2021;Emelko et al 2011;Hallema et al 2018).…”

Section: Implications For Biodiversity and Human Needsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fire and water: global fire impacts on physicochemical properties of freshwater ecosystems

Morales

Paes

Silva

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Freshwater ecosystems are intensely endangered, entailing declines in the biodiversity and ecosystem services. Fire may affect physicochemical water quality parameters of these environments by transference of ash and toxic substances into water bodies, altering nutrient and oxygen concentrations, temperature or turbidity. However, major knowledge gaps in the impacts of fire on freshwater habitats are prevalent. We conducted a global systematic review by searching articles in the Web of Science related to the impacts of fire on the physicochemical water properties of freshwater ecosystems. We estimated ecological and geographic biases, quantified the set of physicochemical parameters investigated, and provided an overview of fire-mediated alterations. We found 54 articles published between 1976 and 2019, with a significant increase during the last decade. Research was strongly biased towards a few western countries, mostly across North America, Europe and Australia. Lotic systems were considerably more studied than lentic systems. Overall, 57 chemical and 17 physical parameters were evaluated, comprising 304 and 77 cases, respectively. Fire altered 68% of the cases studied and this alteration was proportionally similar between chemical (66%) and physical (75%) properties. Nutrient concentration, metal ions, alkalinity, turbidity and temperature were recurrently increased parameters by fire, whereas oxygen mostly decreased. Our study demonstrates that fire commonly affects water quality parameters of freshwater ecosystems. Biases and resulting gaps may steer future sampling efforts and promote a broader understanding of the impacts of fire on these environments. Our results may ultimately guide applicable conservation policies for biodiversity and water management strategies of freshwater habitats.

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Section: Global Research Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Global Research Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For Biodiversity and Human Needsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fire and water: global fire impacts on physicochemical properties of freshwater ecosystems

Morales

Paes

Silva

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…Water quality degradation is likely if elevated runoff, soil erosion, or ash transport occurs after the wildfire [18,22,23]. Scientists have raised awareness regarding wildfire ash impacts on drinking water supplies particularly in areas that experience severe wildfires [24,25].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Persistence of Post-Wildfire Ash: A Multi-Platform Spatiotemporal Analysis

Lewis

Robichaud

Hudak

et al. 2021

Fire

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As wildland fires amplify in size in many regions in the western USA, land and water managers are increasingly concerned about the deleterious effects on drinking water supplies. Consequences of severe wildfires include disturbed soils and areas of thick ash cover, which raises the concern of the risk of water contamination via ash. The persistence of ash cover and depth were monitored for up to 90 days post-fire at nearly 100 plots distributed between two wildfires in Idaho and Washington, USA. Our goal was to determine the most ‘cost’ effective, operational method of mapping post-wildfire ash cover in terms of financial, data volume, time, and processing costs. Field measurements were coupled with multi-platform satellite and aerial imagery collected during the same time span. The image types spanned the spatial resolution of 30 m to sub-meter (Landsat-8, Sentinel-2, WorldView-2, and a drone), while the spectral resolution spanned visible through SWIR (short-wave infrared) bands, and they were all collected at various time scales. We that found several common vegetation and post-fire spectral indices were correlated with ash cover (r = 0.6–0.85); however, the blue normalized difference vegetation index (BNDVI) with monthly Sentinel-2 imagery was especially well-suited for monitoring the change in ash cover during its ephemeral period. A map of the ash cover can be used to estimate the ash load, which can then be used as an input into a hydrologic model predicting ash transport and fate, helping to ultimately improve our ability to predict impacts on downstream water resources.

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“…Although water resource protection is one of the top priorities for wildfire management agencies across the country (Tymstra et al 2019), baseline information on the vulnerability of source waters to wildfire remains limited despite the high potential for water supply disruption (Hohner et al 2019;Martin 2016;Robinne et al 2021). As hydro-climatic extremes conducive to water security issues will keep growing in magnitude and frequency, access to Pan-Canadian baseline WWR information represents an urgent need towards the development of targeted watershed management strategies.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Baseline geographic information on wildfire-watershed risk in Canada: Needs, gaps, and opportunities

Robinne¹,

Paquette²,

Hallema³

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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As the pressures on water supply from shifting forest disturbance regimes continue to escalate, researchers are being asked to answer increasingly complex questions. However, many questions in wildfire-watershed risk (WWR) research remained unaddressed due to a paucity of relevant datasets. There are, indeed, many fundamental processes we do not understand that require additional data collection to develop risk management frameworks. As such, WWR researchers and managers face a paradox in their need to address critical questions important for the sustainability of socio-hydrological systems while dealing with incomplete information. In many cases, this leads to valuable research ideas being discarded on the account of limited data availability. However, imperfect, incomplete, or limited data should not deter researchers and managers from performing analyses to assess risk. In fact, such analyses improve the research benefit-to-cost ratio of existing data, help unravel gaps in data sources, enable generation of new hypotheses, and highlight where data availability and openness can be improved. If we do not use what we have, how can we know what we need? This issue is of particular interest in Canada, where baseline WWR information for the entire country is generally missing, despite growing concerns about water security in the face of a shifting wildfire regimes. In this commentary, we (a) identify several relevant open geospatial datasets, (b) illustrate how these datasets can be leveraged to produce simple yet relevant risk information, (c) identify some high priority data gaps that require immediate attention, and (d) discuss future avenues towards the creation of baseline Pan-Canadian WWR information.

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Scientists' warning on extreme wildfire risks to water supply

Cited by 67 publications

References 73 publications

Fire and water: global fire impacts on physicochemical properties of freshwater ecosystems

Fire and water: global fire impacts on physicochemical properties of freshwater ecosystems

Evaluating the Persistence of Post-Wildfire Ash: A Multi-Platform Spatiotemporal Analysis

Baseline geographic information on wildfire-watershed risk in Canada: Needs, gaps, and opportunities

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