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Type: Journal Article
Author(s): B. A. Ebel; F. K. Rengers; G. E. Tucker
Publication Date: December 2016

Hydrologic response to extreme rainfall in disturbed landscapes is poorly understood because of the paucity of measurements. A unique opportunity presented itself when extreme rainfall in September 2013 fell on a headwater catchment (i.e., < 1 ha) in Colorado, USA that had previously been burned by a wildfire in 2010. We compared measurements of soil-hydraulic properties, soil saturation from subsurface sensors, and estimated peak runoff during the extreme rainfall with numerical simulations of runoff generation and subsurface hydrologic response during this event. The simulations were used to explore differences in runoff generation between the wildfire-affected headwater catchment, a simulated unburned case, and for uniform versus spatially variable parameterizations of soil-hydraulic properties that affect infiltration and runoff generation in burned landscapes. Despite 3 years of elapsed time since the 2010 wildfire, observations and simulations pointed to substantial surface runoff generation in the wildfire-affected headwater catchment by the infiltration-excess mechanism while no surface runoff was generated in the unburned case. The surface runoff generation was the result of incomplete recovery of soil-hydraulic properties in the burned area, suggesting recovery takes longer than 3 years. Moreover, spatially variable soil-hydraulic property parameterizations produced longer duration but lower peak-flow infiltration-excess runoff, compared to uniform parameterization, which may have important hillslope sediment export and geomorphologic implications during long duration, extreme rainfall. The majority of the simulated surface runoff in the spatially variable cases came from connected near-channel contributing areas, which was a substantially smaller contributing area than the uniform simulations. Published 2016. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

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Citation: Ebel, B. A., F. K. Rengers, and G. E. Tucker. 2016. Observed and simulated hydrologic response for a first-order catchment during extreme rainfall 3 years after wildfire disturbance. Water Resources Research, v. 52, no. 12, p. 9367-9389. 10.1002/2016WR019110.

Cataloging Information

Topics:
Regions:
Keywords:
  • burn severity
  • Colorado
  • Colorado Front Range
  • Colorado Front Range
  • Erosion Processes
  • forest fire
  • hydraulic conductivity
  • overland flow generation
  • runoff
  • soil permeability
  • Soil-Water Repellency
  • southeastern Australia
  • spatial variability
  • Subsurface Heterogeneity
  • wildfires
Tall Timbers Record Number: 33549Location Status: Not in fileCall Number: AvailableAbstract Status: Fair use, Okay
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 55505

This bibliographic record was either created or modified by Tall Timbers and is provided without charge to promote research and education in Fire Ecology. The E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database is the intellectual property of Tall Timbers.