Fish and Fire: Predicting Post-Fire Stream Temperature

Post-fire changes in stream temperature can influence population vulnerability of endangered fishes in fire-prone regions.  Understanding the potential effects of fire and fuels management on stream temperature is hampered by the limited availability of data collected before, during, and after fire events.  To help address this issue, we developed a model predicting pre and post-fire stream temperatures for the Wenatchee River basin (WA), based on observed water temperatures and remotely-sensed Land Surface Temperature [LST] collected from 2001 to 2010.  We used data from historical fires in the Wenatchee basin from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity project to locate fires and characterize burn severity.  The observed changes in LST one year post-fire at burned vs. unburned sites across all fires in all years was used to develop models of the expected change in LST for each fire severity class for each 8-day period across the year.  These post-fire LST changes were used to estimate post-fire stream temperature throughout the basin across the year under low, moderate, and high severity burn regimes.