Rapid Response Research (RAPID) Proposal to NSF Hydrologic Sciences: Impacts of Forest Fire on Snow Accumulation and Melt

最近对烧毁和未烧毁森林中的雪-植被相互作用的记录表明，烧毁的森林经历了更多的积雪，但融化得更早、更快。烧毁地区也经历了更高的风速，因此，升华损失和显热输入增加。在当地到分水岭的尺度上，野火产生的黑碳从燃烧的树木中脱落到积雪上，被认为是早期融化的另一个重要强迫，坊间证据表明，野火地区的积雪似乎正在经历这种强迫。火灾的影响很可能代表了雪地植被动力学及其水文影响的新范例。这项水文研究将集中在最近被烧毁的源头集水区--俄勒冈州喀斯喀兹的影子湖，该湖每年冬天通常会收到超过2米的雪水当量。这项研究将对野火对积雪堆积和消融的影响以及所涉及的机制的程度提供实质性的直接结果。成对的地点将使我们能够量化地点的差异，三维测量将提供关键的植被结构信息，横断面将提供关于燃烧-未燃烧的坡度以及新旧燃烧地点之间的信息，来自监测网络的数据将提供关键的空间和时间背景信息。这项工作的结果将为了解火灾对积雪动力学的水文影响提供重要的见解，并有可能重新定义受火灾影响的流域中雪-植被相互作用的范例。

Recent work documenting snow-vegetation interactions in burned and unburned forests show that burned forests experience increased snow accumulation but earlier and more rapid melt. Burned areas also experience higher wind speeds and as a result, increased sublimation losses and sensible heat inputs. At the local-to-watershed scale, wildfire-derived black carbon sloughing from burned trees onto the snowpack has been suggested as an additional important forcing of earlier melt and anecdotal evidence suggests that snowpacks in the wildfire areas appear to be experiencing this forcing. The effects of fire are likely to represent a new paradigm for snow-vegetation dynamics and their hydrologic impacts. This hydrologic research will focus on a recently burned headwaters catchment, Shadow Lake in the Oregon Cascades, which typically receives over 2 m of snow water equivalent each winter. This research will provide substantial direct results on the impacts of wildfire on snowpack accumulation and ablation and the magnitudes of the mechanisms involved. Paired sites will allow us to quantify site differences, 3-dimensional measurements will provide key vegetation structure information, transects provide information across burned-unburned gradients and between recent and older burn sites, and data from monitoring networks will provide key spatial and temporal contextual information. The results of this work will provide important insights into the hydrologic impacts of fire on snowpack dynamics with potential to redefine the paradigm of snow-vegetation interactions in fire-affected watersheds.