Megafire affects stream sediment flux and dissolved organic matter reactivity, but land use dominates nutrient dynamics in semiarid watersheds.

ABSTRACT: Climate change is causing larger wildfires and more extreme precipitation events in many regions. As these ecological disturbances increasingly coincide, they alter lateral fluxes of sediment, organic matter, and nutrients. Here, we report the stream chemistry response of watersheds in a semiarid region of Utah (USA) that were affected by a megafire followed by an extreme precipitation event in October 2018. We analyzed daily to hourly water samples at 10 stream locations from before the storm event until three weeks after its conclusion for suspended sediment, solute and nutrient concentrations, water isotopes, and dissolved organic matter concentration, optical properties, and reactivity. The megafire caused a ~2,000-fold increase in sediment flux and a ~6,000-fold increase in particulat

SUBMITTER: Crandall T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8460006 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature