USGS Firelight - Vol. 1 | Issue 4
Water Quality After Wildfire
Wildfires pose a substantial risk to water supplies because they can lead to severe flooding, erosion, and delivery of sediment, nutrients, and metals to rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. The USGS works with federal and state land managers and local water providers to monitor and assess water quality after wildfires in order to help protect our Nation’s water resources.
Postfire debris-flow hazards
Wildfires can significantly alter the way water interacts with the landscape to the extent that even modest rainstorms can produce dangerous flash floods and debris flows. Recent fires in the western U.S. have impacted hundreds of thousands of acres of steep land, much of it public, making it susceptible to increased erosion and debris-flow activity. With the risk of severe wildfires continuing to rise and more development happening in fire-prone areas, it’s important to develop tools to understand the potential hazards posed by debris flows in recently burned areas.
This project aims to create quick and accurate ways to evaluate postfire debris-flow hazards. It also uses applied research to better understand the processes that control post-fire debris-flow initiation and growth. Federal, state, and local agencies need reliable scientific information about these hazards to help reduce the impact of wildfires on people, their homes, and the environment.
Mechanisms of forest resilience
Ecosystems are dynamic systems with complex responses to environmental variation. In response to pervasive stressors of changing climate and disturbance regimes, many ecosystems are realigning rapidly across spatial scales, in many cases moving outside of their observed historical range of variation into alternative ecological states. In some cases, these new states are transitory and represent su
Burned Area Emergency Response Support Program
Providing satellite images, burn area severity classifications, and other critical data to BAER teams.
Water-Starved Shrubs Likely Intensified Recent Wildfires in Southern California
Researchers link shrubs that died during a severe drought to recent large fires.
The 3D Elevation Program: Understanding Natural Hazards in Three Dimensions
This story map provides an overview of the 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) and highlights how lidar data support hazards applications for volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes, flooding, drought and wildfires. An assessment of 3DEP data coverage as of June 2020 for high-risk areas of landslides, fires and hurricanes is presented.
Greater Sage-Grouse Respond Positively to Intensive Post-Fire Restoration Treatments
The results of a new study show that post-wildfire management efforts, including herbicide treatment and seeding of native plants, influence sage-grouse habitat selection.