Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2023

Publication Title

Geophysical Research Letters

Abstract

Predicting sediment yield from recently burned areas remains a challenge but is important for hazard and resource management as wildfire impacts increase. Here we use lidar-based monitoring of two fires in southern California, USA to study the movement of sediment during pre-rainfall periods and postfire periods of flooding and debris flows over multiple storm events. Using a data-driven approach, we examine the relative importance of terrain, vegetation, burn severity, and rainfall amounts through time on sediment yield. We show that incipient fire-activated dry sediment loading and pre-fire colluvium were rapidly flushed out by debris flows and floods but continued erosion occurred later in the season from soil erosion and, in ∼9% of catchments, from shallow landslides. Based on these observations, we develop random forest regression models to predict dry ravel and incipient runoff-driven sediment yield applicable to small steep headwater catchments in southern California.

Comments

Published in Geophysical Research Letters by American Geophysical Union. Available via doi: 10.1029/2023GL104626.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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