The 2020 Cameron Peak wildfire in northern Colorado is the third largest wildfire in Colorado history, and it covers 19% of the Cache la Poudre basin, which supplies water for multiple cities and irrigation districts. Fires pose risks to water supplies and infrastructure due to post-fire floods, erosion, and debris flows. After prior large fires in Colorado, these risks have been greatest during summer thunderstorms, with minimal hazards during winter and spring snowmelt seasons. However, the Cameron Peak fire is unique in that it has burned at much higher elevations than these previous large fires. Compared to all wildfires across the western U.S. since 1984, the Cameron Peak fire has burned the largest area recorded in the persistent snow zone, the high mountain zone where snow stays on the ground from winter through spring. Because the snowpack is so much greater in this zone than at lower elevations, snowmelt could cause more dramatic slope and channel changes than have been documented for other fires. This project will focus on collecting critical post-fire data for understanding how the fire impacts the snowpack, streamflow, slope failures, stream channels, and water supply reservoirs.
Data collection will include drone flights, a sensor network, and field surveys conducted both across the full burn area and at focus areas at the higher and lower elevations of the fire. Snowpack changes will be documented using fine resolution topography for snow-free and snow-on conditions collected from LiDAR and drone imagery. At focus areas in burned and unburned conditions, weather stations will document snow depth and radiation budget, and field surveys will document spatial patterns of snow water equivalent. Streamflow changes will be documented using a network of stream stage sensors distributed by elevation, burn severity, and drainage area. Erosion, slope failures, and channel changes will be identified by comparing drone imagery from before snow accumulation, after snowmelt, and after summer thunderstorms. Field surveys of channels will also document channel geomorphic changes and distributions of large wood and sediment. Finally, sedimentation rates to water supply reservoirs will be quantified using sediment cores. These datasets will be released as soon as possible after collection and will facilitate post-fire research coordination among an interdisciplinary team of scientists with expertise in atmospheric science, hydrology, and geomorphology. This project is co-funded by the Geomorphology and Land-use Dynamics and the Hydrological Sciences 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.
