RAPID: Collecting critical data for advancing our understanding of wildfire impacts on soil characteristics and research on post-wildfire compound hazards

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This project offers a unique opportunity to advance our fundamental understanding of hydrologic and geomorphic processes following wildfire events. The project will provide public access to perishable data with a wide range of potential applications for stakeholders in many fields, including hydrology, geomorphology, ecology, geotechnical engineering, and natural hazards management. The team will collect a variety of data including: post-fire near-surface soil moisture, electric conductivity, soil temperature and CO2 flux after wildfire events in nearby burned and unburned areas; soil samples using in-situ geotechnical sampling and tests to understand geotechnical characteristics of burned and unburned soils (e.g., soil texture, hydraulic properties, shear strength and compressibility); soil texture, land cover change and vegetation change information from drone images and aerial photos. The project will provide training to a graduate student in data collection. The lead university is a minority serving institution. The principal investigators frequently recruit minority undergraduate students. The data collected in this project will be used for future undergraduate research projects.Wildfires greatly change the land cover of hydrologic basins, increasing the overland flow and debris movement, and oftentimes decreasing the basin’s time of concentration. Wildfires can also adversely impact geotechnical characteristics (e.g., index, mechanical, hydraulic properties) of the near-surface soil in burned areas, which may result in reduced soil stability and increased likelihood of post-wildfire landslides, mud and debris flows, erosion, and excessive runoff. Floods and debris flows pose a significant threat, especially when extreme precipitation falls over burned areas (e.g., the 2018 debris flow in Montecito, California). This is an example of a compound event in which two consecutive events lead to extreme societal impacts. In this project, the investigators will collect perishable post-fire data with a focus on changes in soil characteristics in burned areas. This data could be useful for analyses on compound geohazards associated with wildfires, including landslide and debris flow analysis and land-surface dynamics. This award is co-funded by the Hydrologic Sciences and the Geomorphology and Land-use Dynamics programs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.