Drivers of soil water repellency after wildfires: case study in the south-central Appalachian Mountains, US

Increasing frequency of wildfire in humid hardwood forests make it necessary to understand the occurrence and origin of soil water repellency in these systems, as wildfire-induced soil water repellency has been observed to severely impact many biophysical processes in other forest types. In this project, we studied two sites in the Appalachian Mountains, United States, (at Mount Pleasant Wildlife Refuge, Virginia, and Chimney Rock State Park, North Carolina) where wildfires occurred in late 2016. In each site, burned and unburned soils were evaluated for actual (in the field) and potential (in the laboratory) water repellency using the water drop penetration time method. In addition, samples were analyzed for organic carbon content (measured using C/N analyzer), hydrophobic functional groups (using Fourier transform infrared, FTIR), and their rank correlations (r_s) based on multiple samples collected one year after the fires. We found that soil water repellency was substantial greater in burned soils in the first months after the fire, and persisted for the entire year in the more severely burned soils. We also determined that potential water repellency was much greater than actual water repellency, and that organic carbon content and hydrophobic functional groups were significantly correlated to potential water repellency (p < 0.0001). Correlations were stronger at Mount Pleasant (0.77 < r_s <0.91) than at Chimney Rock (0.06 < r_s < 0.70). For actual water repellency only had significant correlations with soil organic content at Mount Pleasant (p < 0.0001), and with hydrophobic functional groups (p < 0.0001) at both sites except the unburned soils at Chimney Rock. However, these correlations were weaker than with potential water repellency, likely due to the influence of soil water content. Altogether, this study provides new insight into the influence of soil organic matter and its composition on post-wildfire soil water repellency.