When Wildfire Burns A High Mountain Forest, What Happens To The Snow?

January 25, 2021 at 11:50 AM PST

Speaker 1: 00:00 Speaker 2: 00:29 Speaker 3: 00:43 Speaker 2: 00:46 Speaker 3: 00:51 Speaker 2: 00:55 Speaker 3: 00:59 Speaker 2: 01:06 Speaker 3: 01:27 Speaker 2: 01:37 Speaker 4: 01:56 Speaker 2: 02:00 Speaker 4: 02:14 Speaker 2: 02:19 Speaker 4: 02:27 Speaker 2: 02:35 Speaker 4: 02:54 Speaker 2: 03:03 Speaker 4: 03:23 Speaker 3: 03:36 Speaker 2: 03:41 Speaker 3: 04:10 Speaker 2: 04:20 Speaker 1: 04:34 Record-breaking wildfires in 2020 turned huge swaths of Western forest into barren burn scars, those forests store, winter snow pack that millions of people rely on for drinking and irrigation water, but with such large and wide reaching fires, there's little data to work with on what comes next as K U and UNCs Luke Runyon reports, scientists are investigating. What happens when a river's headwaters goes up in flames Roaming through a burn scar is like running an obstacle course. There are downed trees to climb over duck under and Oh no. I'm okay. Yep. The trees that are entirely burned out, leaving gaping holes in the ground. Wow. There's so much Ash there. Oh my gosh. That is so much Ash. That's Stephanie camp, a hydrology professor at Colorado state university. They burn all the way down underground, just like followed the roots. Yeah. Look at that Camp. And a team of researchers are installing a weather station and stream gauges along a steep Creek within the Cameron peak burn scar and more than 208,000 acres. The Northern Colorado fire is the state's largest on record. Camp wants to know what happens to the snow that falls on a burned area. Some of these streams had burned so much. I don't know if you noticed coming up like the whole riparian zone is burned. And so there's nothing alive at all. No, in the West equals water and camp says research shows fires can affect snowpack in very different ways with no trees, more snow accumulates on the ground. But the lack of tree cover also means it's more exposed to the sun. And in the spring melting can become erratic. We're kind of in a brave new world when it comes to snow and wildfire And Nolan studies geography at the university of Nevada Reno, she says another side effect of fire is how it can change the composition of snow. When it falls on the ground, it becomes darker picking up charred bits, And then all that black duck on the snow makes it melt a lot faster. Fires are an important part of forest ecology in the Western us. But Nolan says the fires in 2020 were unprecedent. The scale that we're experiencing now, we actually don't know what the hydrologic impacts will be. That's because no two fires are alike. Gabrielle Boyd Remi is a researcher at the desert research Institute in Las Vegas. She's looked closely at one Creek in Yosemite national park. Their land managers have been hands off and allowed smaller fires to burn more. When did those kinds of fires then lead to less sedimentation and less problems with flooding and water quality. Um, and it looks like they do Their hurdle is getting good data from burn scars, landslides and floods. After a fire can destroy scientific instruments, leaving the record in complete, but as fires burn bigger and hotter, boy rhe may says there's a push for researchers to get into the field and understand how fire and water. And so people are starting to realize that and starting to realize that we're working on such thin margins in terms of water supply in the West that no, we actually need to know. Okay, well I'm yes. I think we just thought to do this. And if you want to spend another day looking for more sites After an hour and a half of scrambling through the Cameron peak burn scar researcher, Stephanie camp and her team have found a location for their weather station and begin staking it into the burnt ground camp says it can be easy to think of wildfires as singular acute events that displace people from their homes and choke the air with smoke until they're put out. But when it comes to snow pack and water supplies, the impact can last for decades. And so when those areas get stressed by something like a whole series of severe wildflowers, then we're talking about affecting the water supply of not just that, But the entire water supply of the West. Since most of our region's rivers start in relatively small snowy forests. I'm Luke Runyon in pooter Canyon, Colorado. This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado river produced in partnership with public media station K UNC in Northern Colorado with financial support by the Walton family foundation.

By KPBS Public Media

Record-breaking wildfires in 2020 turned huge swaths of Western forests into barren burn scars. Those forests store winter snowpack that millions of people rely on. But with such large and wide-reaching fires, the science on the effects to the region’s water supplies isn’t well understood.