Post-fire riparian management

On 7 September 2020, strong winds in western Oregon ignited and spread many small fires, leading to multiple simultaneous megafires (fires > 404 km2) that burned across multiple land ownerships. These fires burned at differing severities, resulting in a range of post-fire riparian and freshwater conditions and an opportunity to evaluate aquatic and riparian responses to fire across ownerships that vary in elevation, forest stand age, and forest-management strategies. To better understand these dynamics, the authors in this study measured riparian overstory survival, LW, and coarse wood (wood in riparian areas), as well as in-stream physical, chemical, and biological variables to fire severity and pre-fire stand age in 24 streams in western Oregon from 8-11 months following multiple fires, including the Riverside, Beachie, and Holiday Farm Fires.

In this study, researchers developed models of freshwater habitat for spring Chinook Salmon in pre- and post-fire scenarios in the Wenatchee River sub-basin of central Washington, where a large number of wildfires have occurred in the past 30 years. They predicted changes in in-stream wood, sediment, and water temperature as a result of wildfires and modeled their influence on habitat quality for three life stages (egg/fry, juvenile, and adult) of spring Chinook Salmon. They also compared their model results with the current and historic distribution of spring Chinook Salmon to better understand if decreasing populations are distributed in ways that correlate with fire impacts on habitats.