One of the increasing impacts of climate change is the occurrence of wildfires. The US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) Post-Wildfire Water Quality and Ecology team in partnership with the Watersheds and Water Quality Research Lab at Mississippi State University analyzed the effects of fires on streamflow discharge and temperature in undammed watersheds in the Willamette River Basin in Oregon. The study compared watersheds burned in 2020 wildfires with others that were untouched, allowing for a direct comparison of the target variables at locations experiencing regionally consistent temperature, precipitation, and other climate-driven factors during the analysis period. For both sets of watersheds, changes in land cover and potential changes in trends for long-term streamflow discharge and temperature patterns were evaluated using National Land Cover data, and USGS water data from before and after the burn, respectively. This analysis leveraged GIS in a statistical workflow to aid in future wildfire watershed restoration from a hydrologic and water quality perspective.
