Award Abstract # 2052581
RAPID: Collecting critical data for advancing our understanding of wildfire impacts on soil characteristics and research on post-wildfire compound hazards

NSF Org: EAR
Division Of Earth Sciences
Recipient: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE
Initial Amendment Date: November 9, 2020
Latest Amendment Date: November 9, 2020
Award Number: 2052581
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Justin Lawrence
jlawrenc@nsf.gov
 (703)292-2425
EAR
 Division Of Earth Sciences
GEO
 Directorate for Geosciences
Start Date: November 15, 2020
End Date: April 30, 2022 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $49,997.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $49,997.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2021 = $49,997.00
History of Investigator:
  • Amir AghaKouchak (Principal Investigator)
    amir.a@uci.edu
  • Hamidreza Norouzi (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Farshid Vahedifard (Co-Principal Investigator)
  • Tirtha Banerjee (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of California-Irvine
160 ALDRICH HALL
IRVINE
CA  US  92697-0001
(949)824-7295
Sponsor Congressional District: 47
Primary Place of Performance: University of California-Irvine
5404 Engineering Hall
Irvine
CA  US  92697-2175
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
47
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): MJC5FCYQTPE6
Parent UEI: MJC5FCYQTPE6
NSF Program(s): Hydrologic Sciences,
XC-Crosscutting Activities Pro,
Geomorphology & Land-use Dynam
Primary Program Source: 01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 7914
Program Element Code(s): 157900, 722200, 745800
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.050

ABSTRACT

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.

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The main objective of this project was collecting perishable post-fire data with a focus on changes in soil characteristics in burned areas with applications to hydrology, debris flow modeling and land surface evolution. The team collected data from different sites across California where nearby burned and unburned areas were accessible (i.e., fire boundaries). The reason for focusing on fire boundaries was to minimize the effect of climate variability on our results. Variability in precipitation, for example, can explain changes in soil moisture. By collecting soil moisture in similar nearby burned and unburned environment, we can argue that the observed changes are likely dominated by wildfires. This approach primarily focuses on relative change (comparison) between two locations at the time in many different sites.

 

The results showed significant changes to both soil moisture and soil temperature after wildfires. In most areas, soil moisture was reduced, and soil temperature was increased after fire events. The data is available to the public, and the findings information can be used as inputs into assessment and predictive models (e.g., estimates of temperature and soil moisture change as inputs into hydrologic models for simulating post-fire hydrologic response).

 

As an example, Figure 1 shows boxplots of soil moisture in burned and unburned areas measured in Chino Hills, California. The results shows that the soil moisture values are lower in the burned environment. Figure 2 displays and example of soil surface temperatures in burned and unburned areas. Here observations are used to generate two distribution functions. As shown, the burned environment is significantly warmer and its distribution exhibits more variability.

 

 


Last Modified: 08/29/2022
Modified by: Amir Aghakouchak

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