USU Researchers Modeling Burn Scars to Predict Potential Flood Severity

A wildfire is a dazzling spectacle of dread and destruction.

As it dances through a landscape, it moves and bends with the wind, sometimes created from the depths of its own consumption. Its yellow-orange light has tantalized and traumatized generations of humans and animals alike — stretching back eons to Earth's creation.

The smoke and ash produced from the flames darkens and reddens the sun, sometimes for hundreds of miles, signaling that somewhere the world is alight.

Left in the wake of this brightness and heat is a place darkened and muted. And like its creator, it is itself now a manufacturer of mayhem. Burn scars, as the name suggests, are the semi-permanent remains of a landscape torched by wildfires — charred trees, burned-over bushes, and soil that's been baked by temperatures reaching thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.

As a result, "the soil becomes very hydrophobic," says Belize Lane, a watershed hydrologist with the Utah Water Research Laboratory.

---

The remainder of this article will be featured in the fall issue of the Utah State Magazine coming in October.