UNDERSTANDING FEEDBACK LOOPS IN COUPLED HUMAN-LANDSCAPE SYSTEMS FOR MITIGATING POTENTIAL HAZARDS: AN EXAMPLE FROM THE 2012 WALDO CANYON FIRE OF COLORADO

Hazards from wildfire are growing as a result of a warming climate that has increased the frequencies and magnitudes of fire, as well as human encroachment upon fire-prone lands. Wildfires may cause hydrologic and geomorphologic responses that pose direct threats to human communities. With vegetation burned, these responses include elevated runoff as a result of decreased infiltration into hydrophobic soils, an influx of sediment that fills stream channels and pollutes water supplies, and debris flows. For communities situated downstream of burned watersheds, recognition of these risks often prompts engineering efforts intended to protect lives and property. In the case of the 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, Colorado, the burn elicited a host of human responses that included construction of debris basins and tall fence barriers to trap coarse sediment. In this paper, we outline how these activities initiated sequences of human-geomorphic feedback interactions in a systems context. Rather than dampening the effects of fire, these human responses promoted further changes in the landscape that ultimately increased the hazards. The human-landscape interactions created a scenario that makes a return to pre-fire conditions -- or "recovery" – impossible. Understanding feedbacks has been identified recently as a grand challenge to managing human-landscape systems in the "Anthropocene." Recognizing and anticipating feedback interactions is therefore essential to effective mitigation and management of wildfire and other environmental and geological hazards, in a climate where such hazards are expected to increase.