Modeling fuel treatment effectiveness for reducing the risk of watershed degradation

Fire can affect aquatic resources as well as terrestrial landscapes. Colleagues in the Watershed Sciences department and I published a paper documenting the risk that reservoirs are under due to fire risk, given a century of fire exclusion and a historical misunderstanding of fire’s role and prevalence on western landscapes. We are now working on a project focused on how to place fuel treatments in order to reduce high-severity fire and subsequent negative impacts on downstream reservoir storage and fish habitat through sedimentation and debris flows. Graduate student Kipling Klimas is leading this project.