"For example, depending on the sub-region and species composition, reseeding efforts following low snow winters might employ more drought tolerant species or, replanting could be delayed one to two years until snowmelt and soil moisture conditions are more favorable for seedling propagation. "This knowledge may be used to facilitate adaptive post-fire management policies and decisions to ensure long-term forest health," Nolin, who is also director of the University of Nevada, Reno's Graduate Program of Hydrological Sciences, said.
Given the trends of increasing wildfire activity, lower snowpacks, and earlier snow disappearance dates across the Pacific Northwest, forests will likely experience more frequent drought conditions, which will negatively impact the success of post‐wildfire vegetation recovery with a number of impacts to the ecosystem. In their paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences, ”Assessing the Role of Snow Cover for Post-Wildfire Revegetation Across the Pacific Northwest," the findings show that There are many short- and long-term effects from these fires, including erosion, debris flows and water quality issues, which can affect the health of aquatic ecosystems and downstream community water supply, highlighting the importance of understanding post-fire forest rehabilitation. The fires occurred over a 10-year period among the four distinct subregions of the Columbia River Basin. The NASA-supported study featured before-and-after vegetation analyses for two dozen high-severity wildfires. She teamed with co-author Andrew Wilson, a graduate research assistant in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, and co-author Kevin Bladon of OSU's College of Forestry for the study. The research, led by Nolin, examined the 260,000-square-mile Columbia River Basin in the Pacific Northwest. Pacific Northwest snowpacks have seen the greatest declines of any seasonal snow region in the West.
This could help inform revegetation management practices following severe wildfires."Ĭlimate change has already increased the fraction of winter precipitation that falls as rain rather than snow, reduced the spring snow water equivalent - a metric for how much water snow contains - and caused snowmelt to begin earlier in the spring than it used to, Nolin explained. "In particular, we found that snow cover was a critical explanatory variable for revegetation in the Oregon and Washington Cascades.
"Our study illustrated that summer precipitation, snow cover and elevation were all important drivers of revegetation success," said Anne Nolin, a hydrologist and geography professor at the University of Nevada, Reno and formerly at Oregon State University. RENO - With wildfires devastating mountain ecosystems across the western United States, their successful forest revegetation recovery hinges on, among other factors, an adequate lasting snowpack, according to research by the University of Nevada, Reno and Oregon State University.