Collaborative Research: Spatial Dynamics of Burn Severity and Post-fire Recovery in the High Park Fire Burn Area

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The western United States has experienced an unprecedented period of wildfires in the last two decades, and both land owners and downstream water users are vulnerable to wildfire and its effects on erosion and water quality. The 2012 High Park Fire was the second largest fire in Colorado history (over 35,000 ha burned) and burned in a wildland-urban interface of public and private lands located north and west of Fort Collins, CO. This research will provide a unique understanding of the second largest fire in Colorado history. The award will enable studies of the biological and physical dynamics of burn severity and post-fire recovery 2012 High Park Fire using an integrative approach that combines high resolution remote sensing provided by the National Ecological Observatory Airborne Observatory (AOP) remote sensing instruments and in situ field collected data. The award will provide funds for developing an integrated understanding of the biological and physical responses to fire across a spatially complex landscape. The study has six objectives: (1) characterize the post-fire landscape, (2) investigate the effects of pre-fire landscape conditions on burn severity, (3) examine the post-fire biological response, (4) examine the post-fire physical response, (5) conduct an integrated biological and physical assessment of the fire impacts on the Cache la Poudre watershed, and (6) inform future AOP applications. Two of these (1 & 6) are methodological objectives aimed at developing strategies for using AOP data to examine landscape response to a large disturbance, and the remaining (2-5) are scientific objectives related to understanding controls on burn severity and post-fire response. The data on the spectral, topographic and forest structure qualities of the recovering landscape will facilitate an understanding of the physical and biological processes of recovery within a common spatially-explicit three-dimensional framework. By integrating the extensive information in the airborne remote sensing data with field monitoring, the research allows examination of spatial and temporal dynamics at a level of detail that would not be feasible with field measurements alone. The combined biological and physical analyses will facilitate understanding of the feedbacks between vegetation changes and post-fire erosion and deposition patterns. Combining the field and remote sensing datasets will allow an assessment of the impact of the fire, provide data products useful to the scientific and management communities, and support future research on ecosystem recovery. A postdoc and two graduate students will be fully integrated in the research, thus building awareness and capacity for using airborne remote sensing data in the future.