BUILDING CAPACITY TO ASSESS AND PREDICT POST-WILDFIRE WATER AVAILABILITY AT THE U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Wildfires are increasing in size and frequency in many areas of the United States of America. The effects of wildfire include changes in the quality and quantity of water supplies. Potential shifts in post-wildfire water availability (quantity and quality) pose challenges for land and water managers. The U.S. Geological Survey Water Mission Area is working to build new capabilities to assist in planning for and adapting to acute and chronic stresses on water resources after wildfire. Ongoing work includes collecting new post-wildfire datasets in affected watersheds to enable development of new modeling and assessment tools. Interpretation of these new datasets coupled with existing datasets will elucidate the critical drivers of post-wildfire effects. Remote sensing approaches for rapid evaluation of wildfire effects on water quality are being developed. Blueprints laying out gaps in physically based distributed modeling and promising areas for model advancement are being built. These new tools are laying the foundation to advance capabilities to rapidly model and assess post-wildfire shifts in water availability. In addition, these tools could provide scenarios for potential changes in the concentrations of constituents of concern to water providers.