Parsing Weather Variability and Wildfire Effects on the Post-Fire Changes in Daily Stream Flows : A Quantile-Based Statistical Approach and its Application.

ABSTRACT: Determining wildland fire impacts on streamflow can be problematic as the hydrology in burned watersheds is influenced by post-fire weather conditions. This study presents a quantile-based analytical framework for assessing fire impacts on low and peak daily flow magnitudes, while accounting for post-fire weather influences. This framework entails (a) the bootstrap method to compute the relative change in the post-fire annual flow and weather statistics, (b) Double Mass analysis to detect if post-fire baseflow and quick flow yield ratios are significantly altered, and (c) a quantile regression method to parse fire effects on flow at a specific quantile. We illustrate the applicability of this analytical framework using 44 western US streams with at least 5% of their watershed area burned.

SUBMITTER: Beyene MT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8654146 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature