EGU2020-12365, updated on 09 Jan 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12365
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Wildfire temperature effect on soils physical and hydraulic properties

Sofía Martínez, Cristina Contreras, Sara Acevedo, and Carlos Bonilla
Sofía Martínez et al.
  • Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Department of hydraulic and environmental engineering, Chile

Wildfires affect soil physical, chemical, and hydraulic properties, which in turn control many processes such as soil water availability, soil water balance, infiltration, and soil stability. Because of the multiple factors controlling the changes in soil properties and the nature of fire events, the number of predictive models for these effects is limited. Therefore, the objective of this study was to develop a soil-burning laboratory procedure to identify changes in physical and hydraulic soil properties across a fire temperature range. With this purpose, saturated hydraulic conductivity, pH, electric conductivity, soil texture, aggregate stability, repellency, and organic matter content (OM) were measured in soils burned at increasing temperatures. Six sandy loam soils were burned at four different temperatures (300ºC, 500ºC, 700ºC and 900ºC) and non-burned samples were used as a control to compute the change on each property. Additionally, three of these soils were sampled in a naturally burned area and used later to test the laboratory setup reliability to reproduce a natural fire. Preliminary results for soils burned in a muffle furnace (300ºC for two hours) showed that the changes in physical properties are more significant with soils rich in OM. On the other hand, properties such as water retention and hydraulic conductivity curves showed little variation at 300ºC.

How to cite: Martínez, S., Contreras, C., Acevedo, S., and Bonilla, C.: Wildfire temperature effect on soils physical and hydraulic properties, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-12365, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12365, 2020.

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