Encyclopedia of Wildfires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires

Living Edition
| Editors: Samuel L. Manzello

Fire Effects on Soils and Hydrology

  • Cathelijne R. StoofEmail author
Living reference work entry
First Online:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51727-8_257-1
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Synonyms

Fire severity; Soil burn severity

Definition

Changes to soil properties and hydrology caused by direct and indirect effects of fire

Introduction

Fire can change soil and hydrology in different ways: directly by heating soils and changing soil properties and indirectly by removing protective ground cover and creating ash. The size of these changes is referred to as fire severity or soil burn severity and varies greatly between fire types. They can range from minimal in (controlled) moving landscape fires that occur when soils are moist, to substantial in fires that stay in a single place for very long such as pile burns and smoldering fires. The combined effects of soil and ground cover changes can alter the response of soils and streams to rainfall. Fire can therefore potentially increase a landscape’s vulnerability to erosion and flooding events, also referred to as ecosystem responses (Keeley 2009).

This contribution describes the direct and indirect effects of fire on soils...

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Copyright information

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Wageningen UniversityWageningenThe Netherlands

Section editors and affiliations

  • Kuibin Zhou
    • 1
  1. 1.Nanjing Tech UniversityNanjingChina