Estimating Soil Erosion Rate Changes in Areas Affected by Wildfires

Abstract

In recent decades, wildfires have become a serious threat worldwide, producing disasters in the natural and anthropogenic environment as well as serious economic losses. One of wildfire’s major impacts is soil erosion, as it may cause major problems in both the physical and anthropogenic environment and seriously affect the landscape. This study investigates the soil erosion rate changes in areas affected by wildfires and uses, as a pilot area, the drainage basin of the Pinios earth-filled dam located in the Ilia Regional Unit, western Greece, which has suffered serious erosion changes after a wildfire event. For this purpose, the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) is applied in GIS software, and the soil erosion rate changes in the selected investigation area are estimated at different time intervals. Specifically, soil erosion rate changes are calculated by importing the factors from the RUSLE equation in the GIS software and uses as a dependent variable the cover management factor C, which is strongly influenced by large destructive fires. The models that are produced are compared with each other by collating average annual soil erosion maps and rates before the fire, immediately after the fire and for the existing conditions occurring in the pilot area.