Owen Jiang – Lab 2: Forest Fire Runoff

I followed my line of inquiry from the first introductory lab further by exploring the repercussions of forest fires. I wondered what the recovery process would entail and pondered what tremendous difficulties the respective government organizations must face. This prompted several questions. What are the consequences of rainfall on the existing forest fire debris? I believe that the rain will cause runoffs which will unfortunately affect other ecological systems.

For example, how are forest fire runoffs being properly addressed to avoid contamination of invaluable water resources?

Additional observations which will serve helpful are that the methods of water treatment can be refined or perhaps redirecting the debris runoff can serve to be effective. Utilizing either option or both will do well to improve the already damaged system from forest fires.

According to https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-wildfires-are-polluting-rivers-and-threatening-water-supplies, “… the intensity and frequency of forest fires, and the extreme precipitation…those are the events that can cause severe flooding, extreme sedimentation, and the liberation of undesirable chemicals.”

Since there are so many problems occurring at the same time I believe that more than one method is necessary to address the underlying issues.

As previously mentioned in observations, rather than utilizing either option, both options will do more to reduce water contamination. However, just those two options aren’t enough to salvage a suffering ecosystem.

I believe in conjunction to refinement of water filtration treatment and runoff redirection, extinguishing forest fires efficiently will reduce large amounts of debris.

Research Question: How are rainfall runoffs after forest fires handled properly to avoid water resource contamination?

Observation: Either address water filtration treatment is one approach, or redirecting the runoff to a designated area for removal. However, these two observations maybe too simple for a rather complex issue.

Hypothesis: Refinements in water filtration treatment, runoff protection, redirection, and removal, along with better containment of forest fires themselves will minimize water contamination.

Hypothesis Testing: While these three goals are very difficult, I believe with proper management and timing, reducing water contamination is definitely possible. Perhaps creating additional aqueducts to avoid contaminations of streams flowing into larger bodies of water. Moreover, understand the prerequisite conditions of forest fires, and preemptively planning and expecting their origin point. Additional analysis into the composition of the large amounts of sediment is necessary to find a method to have consumable water. Analysis of the chemicals released into the environment will also shed light on the contamination processes.

Results + Conclusions: Through these three proposed methods working in conjunction, I believe that there will be hopeful results to combat water contamination from precipitation runoff. In order of importance however is understanding and extinguishing forest fires as efficiently as possible, then isolating stream flows from inevitable runoff, and water filtration methods as a final means of defense.