Water We Doing?

Deep Dive: Dr. Kevin Bladon, Wildfires and Water, Oregon State University

April 21, 2021 David Evans / Dr. Kevin Bladon Season 1 Episode 6
Water We Doing?
Deep Dive: Dr. Kevin Bladon, Wildfires and Water, Oregon State University
Show Notes Transcript

Is it just me or do we seem to be getting bigger more devastating wildfires every year? If it isn't fires across Canada, it's California, it's Australia, and it's even the Amazon rainforest. Is this more than normal and should we be worried?

Wildfires are a natural part of many forests systems and help maintain forest health, but when we put out fires too quickly we can end up creating bigger fires for ourselves in the future.

In this episode we will be discussing the effects that wildfires can have on our freshwater systems. We'll discuss the benefits, the negatives and how we should be reframing our conversation about wildfires on our landscapes. in this episode you will hear from Dr. Kevin Bladon from Oregon State University who studies how freshwater systems react after wildfires.

Are you interested in getting more involved in managing your local watershed? If you live in Alberta you can find out which one you are a part of at the Alberta Watershed Councils website! Our local watershed councils are a fantastic resource to learn more about our natural areas and how to get involved on a regional scale!  Whether it's the Athabasca Watershed Council , the Bow River Basin Watershed Council or the North Saskatchewan Watershed Alliance they are all fantastic organizations to get involved with.

To learn more about Dr. Kevin Bladon, his lab and the important research they are doing you can check out his lab website  right here the FEWS Lab.

Interested in the effects of fire on Fort McMurray's drinking water? Click Here!

David Evans:

Welcome to today's deep dive episode. Today, we're going to be learning all about how wildfires impact our water systems, how it can affect what goes into our water, how much erosion is happening on the landscape. And when we actually get our water. If we have really high amounts in the spring, and then low in the summer, it never occurred to me how tightly water and wildfire were linked together. So, so excited to speak with Dr. Kevin bladen, from Oregon State University, as he has been researching this for a very long time and knows a lot about it. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn a little bit more about how wildfire impacts our water systems. water we doing? And how can we do better? your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water to use, and the organisms that depend on it. For all the global issues that you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host, David Evans from the aquatic biosphere project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? How can we do better? I'd welcome to another deep dive episode. I'm so excited today. And we're gonna be learning all about wildfire, and how that actually can impact water systems throughout our continent throughout the world. And and really how wildfire plays a role in water resources and, and how it could potentially affect the water that's coming out of your tap. So Kevin, do you mind introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about the focus of your research?

Unknown:

Sure.

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

Thanks for having me. First of all, great to be part of this podcast. My name is Kevin bladen. I am an associate professor of forest hydrology at Oregon State University. I know a lot of your audience is going to be in Alberta. Why would you talk to somebody from Oregon State? Well, I'm a I'm an Alberta boy. I was born and raised in Sherwood Park and and went to the University of Alberta. I left to the British Columbia for some years and came back and spent a lot of time and so I'm very familiar with with Alberta and done a lot of research there feel very fortunate to have landed in the Pacific Northwest and to continue my research. And so in terms of my research, my research program is focused on understanding how forest disturbances things like forest harvesting, or pest outbreaks or pathogens. And most importantly, wildfires affect of full range of water values from water quantity to water quality to aquatic ecology, as well as downstream community drinking water. So cool. Just to give an idea of why we're talking about this. From my perspective, it seems that every year there's more and more news about wildfires and these terrifying videos of people escaping from fires throughout Canada and the United States. I

David Evans:

mean, we're very familiar in Alberta, definitely with Slave Lake and with Fort McMurray more recently. So just to get us started, wildfires seem to be getting bigger and badder. Every summer, are wildfires actually getting worse?

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

That's that's not as simple of a question as as as it might seem. I guess my first caveat, I'm I'm not a wildfire scientists but certainly because wildfire is such an important part of my research. I'm very familiar with with that that area of research. Um, I think the simple part of that question is we are seeing evidence that our our fire seasons are getting longer, that we're seeing an increase in in area burned over the last several decades from from the previous few decades. And then the fires that are burning, we're seeing those burn at greater severity. So in other words, you know, in in a lot of regions, we might see the same number of fires, but if they burn they're they're burning off And they're burning up more organic matter and you're creating greater and longer lasting impacts that then they had. There's a lot of variability though in that. And that's the difficult part of the question. And I think what what complicates This is, we, we've had really rapid population growth, pot development that's moved into forests over the last several decades. And then you combine that with the way we've managed for us, because we're in the forest, we want to protect that infrastructure. And so as a result, that's kind of set us up to where we are in conditions where we're getting some of these larger fires and that, that that can be it really muddles things. I think if we look back in the 1800s, and 1900s, there was actually a lot of fire on the landscape. And we, we now just suppress that fire. And it's kind of set us up for some larger, more catastrophic fires and with that infrastructure there in place, and that's really contributed to to some of the issues.

David Evans:

Yeah, it's basically like if you just kept throwing a stick onto a pile every year, and then usually would burn every five years. But if you didn't let it burn for 1015 years, you're gonna have a big fire once it actually lights. That's right.

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

Yeah, I think I think the key to that is that it's not simple. And I would say that, you know, folks, folks point the finger when they hear that often that well, we just need to manage the forest differently. And yeah, that's part of the equation. But certainly, climate change, I think, it just seems to be the master control knob right now. And it is leading to hotter, drier conditions and more fires. But there's there are things that we can do to help with the types of fires we're seeing. Yeah,

David Evans:

I'm so curious about what are some of the main impacts that wildfires can have on our water security? Yeah.

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

Yeah, I'm so glad you're here, that we're having a chance to talk about this. And you know, I think with with fires and the issue with smoke,

Unknown:

that

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

that gets people's attention, right, and people are concerned about fires and we here in the Pacific Northwest, this past year, we had a couple of weeks where we were trapped in our homes and taping up around our doors to keep the smoke out and and that all that fire is gone. And the smoke is gone. And to a lot of people that their brains have turned off and go Okay, all the problems are over well as a as a hydrologist and thinking about water. This is when all of our problems are starting. And and those problems can be really long lasting longer than people I think, no, we we may have issues after large wildfires that persist for decades. So what are the there's there's so many that we could talk about. Let's just first I guess the first thing that comes to mind is just simply water supply itself, you know that the amounts of water, you remove the forest canopy have burned up forest canopy, well, now those those trees themselves are not transpiring or using using water. Also, when when it rains or snows that it doesn't fall on the canopy any longer it hits the forest floor. And so you got more water hitting the forest floor, the forest floor has also changed and burn because the organic matter. And so that's going to deliver more water more often more rapidly into our streams, those peak flows that we might see are the flooding events. Those can lead to increases in erosion and movement of a whole bunch of constituents that we could talk about downstream. Also, a bunch of our infrastructure downstream is all engineered based on say historical flood events. And all of that can can create a whole bunch of issues as well that are really expensive. timing of flows is something else in terms of water availability, something people don't think about. So communities that rely on say reservoirs to hold back Water, water managers, they kind of think about way, when do I hold back water? When do I release water for aquatic ecology? wildfire can increase the timing of the delivery of that water by a couple of weeks, that really throws our water managers for a bit of a loop. Well, then, the one other thing I'll add to this in terms of the water supply, then I'll pause and maybe we could talk about that and certainly want to talk about the water quality issues. But one other thing that's really emerging right now and it's got people concerned, and we'll be something to that we really need to do some research. There. We've done research on harvesting so Where we have long term data, we're 5060 years after forest harvesting, there's very few of those sites that we have that kind of data. But in those sites, we have 5060 years after forest harvesting, what we've been able to see and illustrate is that those younger trees 5060 year old versus the 200 year old tree, is are much more vigorous in their water use. And that has led to low flow deficits in the summer. So when our fish need water in the stream, the trees are using far more water, those younger trees, leading to less water in the streams, with implications for aquatic ecology, I think about a large, catastrophic wildfire that burns 20% of an entire basin. That's a massive turnover in vegetation and potential long term implications for water supply.

David Evans:

That's so fascinating. So they're using more water? And it sounds like we don't currently know why. But yeah, that that just having that large of an area that suddenly requires that much more water in that it's, it's either getting sent shunted off the land very early on, and it's not able to be absorbed by those land masses, if it's, it's a fresh fresh burn event, or, or they're actually going to require more water. So yeah, it just seems like instead of having to tap on at a medium of speed all the time, it's either very low flow, or it's very high flow for the first little bit, right?

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

Yeah, I think is trees age, they get a little more efficient in their water use. And so and they have greater control of their estimates, which are just the openings on their leaves that allow carbon dioxide in for them to grow. But at the same time, water leaves out of out of those openings, and they just get a little more efficient at fixing that carbon. And, and losing less water as they age. Those younger trees, they're just who's growing vigorously and because of that, using a lot more water, so you thinking about these large scale areas that burned and flipping them over to younger, more vigorous trees. And as potential implications for for long term water supply for sure. Um, and one other thing I do want to talk about is we've talked a lot about water supply. But other things in terms of wildfire effects on on water security are certainly the things that probably come to most people's minds that we haven't talked about yet, which are, you know, erosion, movement of sediment downstream. You know, the classic example of that is the 2002 Haman fire in Colorado, where the the year after that fire, the precipitation events moved enough sediment to fill their reservoir to the size of a football field, 61 meters deep,

Unknown:

whoa,

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

there's a lot of sediment and for them to dredge that and pull that sediment out of that reservoir to be able to get that capacity back. That cost them about $30 million in taxpayer money. So sediment obviously a key thing is we've lost all that vegetation to hold things together, the vegetation to stop the precip from hitting that forest floor with with a lot of energy. And that's going to lead to the those erosive events. And then with that, we're going to see movement of things like nitrogen and phosphorus and carbon, sort of the building blocks of our aquatic ecosystems, moving into those systems and really changing our aquatic ecology, as well as other constituents of concerned like, like heavy metals moving into, into our stream. So a lot lots going on after after wildfires that can impact our water security.

David Evans:

Alright, everyone buckle up. It seems like this is going to be a lot of long episode because we have so many different things to talk about here. This is fascinating. Everything from heavy metals to carbon, phosphorus, nitrogen, and I come from a biology background. So I'm familiar with the phosphorus and nitrogen and those kind of effects on aquatic ecosystem. Do you mind just speaking a little bit more about what those effects are for the listeners? And especially when it comes to heavy metals? Is that a concern for drinking water as well?

Unknown:

Yeah, I think Well,

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

yeah, let's start with aquatic ecosystems. Certainly, you know that there's really different ways that these constituents can move things like nitrogen and some of the carbon tend to be much more soluble so that they'll dissolve in water and so with as we have water moving on through our systems more rapidly going to move more nitrogen into the into the system. Other constituents like the A lot of our metals and phosphorus, they tend to sort of stick or absorbed to the face of sediment. So as long as we have erosion and sediment moving into the streams, they're going to bring those other constituents along for the ride. And then once in the system, yeah, they can, they can persist in there and propagate and move downstream every year, as we have high flow events, or this spring floods, they're going to move more of that downstream and ultimately, could could hit the intake of some of our community drinking water utilities. But those those constituents the carbon and nitrogen and phosphorus, those building blocks, like I say, they can lead to increases in primary productivity. So more algae may start to grow in systems where we didn't see it. And that algae can provide food opportunities for our invertebrates, and things like true flies or mayflies, don't flies caddisflies. And we can see shifts in that aquatic ecology, the communities may shift may see increases in abundance of invertebrates. And then with that, there can be knock on effects where we see well, more invertebrates for our fish, or fish. In some instances, we've seen them respond positively to some wildfires, that they may increase in their growth rates because of that increase in availability of food. The one the one caveat to that is that with all of our systems, we know there's like a tipping point that if you push it too far, well, all those positive outcomes that we want, can actually go away. And so after wildfires, if we have continued inputs of nitrogen, phosphorus carbon into the system, we get a lot of primary productivity, what can happen is our dissolved oxygen concentrations can start to tank and and that can lead to loss of habitat for for fish, and all those positive things go away, unfortunately. So that's a you know, it's kind of really important and thinking about how we manage after wildfires and trying to help them get on their way to recovery. Because a little bit of those things in the system is great. Too much it can be certainly problematic. In terms of those things as they hit our utilities and communities really, I don't have a lot of concerns. I think it for a lot of years, I might have had concerns as somebody in the public. But I've been very fortunate to work with a colleague from the University of Waterloo, Monica melco, for a lot of years, who's a drinking water treatment engineer and a real expert in in this that field. And what I've learned from her is that utilities are really robust. They've they are constantly monitoring for these these constituents. And as part of the regulations, they've got to remove all of those heavy metals that we hear these scary terms mercury and arsenic and aluminum is I Oh, my gosh, that's in our water. Well, I don't have a lot of concerns for our health associated with those in terms of wildfire. I think our utilities are quite effective. And they're, they're concerned. And we've had massive fires here this year. And I know working with the utilities in the Pacific Northwest. And I know the same for my experience in Alberta. They're they're constantly taking samples of that water and we're looking for those constituents and making sure they're they're removed from from the water and the water is safe to drink.

David Evans:

Well that's music to my ears, it's nice to know that those are being actively searched for and treated properly. So these are concerns maybe if you aren't drinking treated water from a utility system or something like that, but most people are drinking utility water or from a deep well or something like that. So they're not as large of a concern. So most of the water in Alberta comes from the mountain as snow melts. So you touched a little bit on this, but I was hoping just to circle back and how is the snow affected by forests

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

that have been burnt? Yes, certainly snow and and that snowpack is such a critical component of the water supply, both for upstream and downstream. And that wildfires it obviously have a profound impact on on the the snow accumulation and snow melt. So when when we burned a forest, you we lose a lot of that canopy. A lot of the trees remain standing if we don't salvage log, but a lot of that canopy is lost. Then when we have precipitation events, snow snow events, we can lose anywhere from 25 to 30% of that snow back to the atmosphere it lands on and is held in the branches of the canopy and there's something called interception loss and it evaporates back up into the atmosphere while you remove that cannon. Be. Now that's an additional 20 to 35% of water as snow that accumulates on the forest floor. Now, not all that water gets translated into the stream, because the trees themselves end up being darker because they burned and they'll often they will release or reflect radiation either reflecting shortwave radiation from the sun or releasing long wave radiation that they've absorbed to that snowpack and can speed the melt. And and as we get into the spring in the melt season, just like with the snow not being intercepted, well, the radiation isn't being intercepted. And so there's far more direct radiation from the sun hitting that that snowpack. And so while we may see increases in snow accumulation, it tends to melt much more rapidly. And that's what contributes to and can lead to those increases in flood events or peak flow events in in the spring.

David Evans:

Yeah, that's, that's so interesting. So as you kind of mentioned before, a lot of this snow will actually what was the term again, that it's actually transpired into the into the atmosphere?

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

Yeah. So this transpiration is just water used by trees. So what this is, is interception, which is just a form of of evaporation of the snow we call sublimation is the is the official, official textbook term, isn't it's just evaporation of snow directly going from a solid phase to to a gas up into the atmosphere?

David Evans:

Yes. Okay. Perfect. I had never considered of no directly being evaporated or turning into gases from from snow. That's sublimation. Interesting, interesting. So I'm curious as someone who, who hasn't spent that much time along areas along the coast and seen fires there, but I know that there are many fires that happen along, especially throughout the United States along coastlines. A lot of fires are fought using water and water bombers. Are there ever instances where where we use ocean water to actually fight forest fires? And does that have any effects on on the land, especially in other water systems? If we're suddenly dropping sea water onto onto the land?

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

Yeah. It's an interesting question. And our oceans are so amazing. We've got these massive water bodies that in so many ways, because of that salt are, are unusable to us. And there's amazing I've actually never heard of anyone using seawater ocean water for fire suppression. And the reason why actually isn't because of the the salt in this case. But it's actually because of a safety issue and and the swells. So you think about those bombers or helicopters and what how they're having to collect that water. Our ocean systems, they fluctuate vertically, quite a bit, and and really creates a safety issue for collection of that water. And so that, you know, that's not something that I'm aware of anybody doing. But what it does is by asking that question, it really raises something in my mind that I hadn't thought of until just recently and was having a conversation with another colleague and it came to my attention was, of course we do this is really interesting that we have folks in our government agencies who are actively identifying those different potential sources of water that we have for fighting fires, and and in preparation ahead of time, knowing what sources are actually usable. And so we might look around and well, why aren't all of our legs usable? Well think about some of the other issues we have right now around in many of our lakes. We have invasive species. We have harmful algal blooms, we and we don't want to be scooping that kind of water up and spreading invasive species around that we haven't thought of So actually, we we thoughtfully spend the time to identify what sources are actually usable for fighting fires and those are pre identified for for fire suppression efforts.

David Evans:

That's fascinating. Yeah, invasive species is, is a huge issue. And I'd never thought of that. It reminds me of the famous Darwin award of the scuba diver who was found in the middle of a burnt forest and who had been who had been scooped up I'm not sure if that's true or not. But that reminds me of, I've also heard that I was hoping that you could expand maybe a little bit about the work that your lab is actually doing and how your team goes out to these areas to monitor hydrology in response to different forest management techniques or impacts to for essence, what are kind of some of the main questions that you're really looking to answer?

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

For me, I have all a lot of interests. And I'm, I have some some colleagues who do that they'll pick one slice of the world and really focus in on that. And for myself, I'm interested in so many things. And so we're people in my group, we do research from the very small plot scale, to just focusing on it on a hill slope to catchment scale. And I've worked with other folks at a at a regional, provincial or state level scale all the way up to, you know, continental and a global scale. And so all of those require different techniques. And we're asking all kinds of different questions about well, how do fires affect our water availability, the water quantity, the aquatic ecology, linkages are just so important, and how are our fisheries responding as as well as as drinking water treatment. And with all of that we're using really varied techniques from the the dirtiest simplest techniques of just simply isn't a shovel and ziplock bags and collecting soil samples or going standing in the streams and scooping up water. And then we're taking those back to the lab and doing more detailed analyses to having very sophisticated instrumentation now, that really didn't exist until the last several of several years that we can put instruments out in the stream to measure things like carbon and stream temperature and, and the the pH or acidity of the water and the conductivity, which tells you how many of our cat ions and add ions might be in in in the water, we have all these really cool instruments now that we can put in our streams. And they can take measurements for us in in in real time, and have those uploaded to a system where you can sit at home and nerd out and look at look at your data coming in. And all the way from that to now using a lot of the satellite data that we have, there's so many great satellite products that allow us to scale these things up that we've been on the ground and begin with our shovel at that fine scale. But then cool to back it out and look at look at it from a much larger scale. And it's a really exciting time to be a scientist, I'll

Unknown:

tell you,

David Evans:

it sounds like your team is expanding out from the very small to be able to look at the very large and and Yeah, sounds like a very diverse, diverse field. I think that's that's the way to go. I mean, there, there's definitely benefits to looking at one thing and one slice of it. But it's nice to take a larger view, I find these kinds of questions. So I've experienced a lot working in the woods. And I've learned quite a bit about forestry practices. I've often heard of, of logging or forestry practices being considered a way to mimic fire on a landscape. So I'm curious, how does a logged area compared to something that's burnt? And how does that come across within the actual hydrology and the water data? Yeah,

Unknown:

that's a difficult one.

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

I think, you know, I think our managers are trying to be more thoughtful in their approach than then we were historically in in the 1960s 1970s. And we really made great progress. And the forest management today is not our old school, forest management. And for the most part, well,

Unknown:

well,

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

well, managers, I think, would agree that Yeah, we can continue to improve, we can continue to do things better. When we do look back over our shoulder, we have really moved the needle in terms of management and protection of water in terms of that, thinking about well, designing our cut blocks and designing management to mimic mimic natural disturbances like fire. I think that that that's a great idea. And I think that I you know I I applaud folks for attempting that. And I think if we're going to manage to do it thoughtfully, like that certainly makes sense. But there's a lot of differences between those disturbances in in reality, you know, you think about

Unknown:

a

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

Right now in terms of scale, in Alberta, where you are you have limits on cut block sizes, we have limits on cut block sizes in the Pacific Northwest as well now. And so in Alberta, I think the cut block size limits are you can correct me if I'm if I'm wrong, but I believe that they're that the block size limits are something like 24 hack their patches. If you're cutting something like a spruce forest up to I think 32 hectares in size, we had wildfires this year in the Pacific Northwest. Five of them that exceeded it'll 4000 square kilometers, is like this, just the scale of that. They're, they're totally different beasts in that way. The other thing associated with that you think about Okay, forest harvesting, they're coming in either with a person on the ground, cutting those trees down, skidding them on to some landing with a piece of equipment, or they're using cables to drag those logs to a landing. And they're doing so in a really thoughtful way now, and more so than they did in the past are sort of planning out those pathways, and really limiting their impact on the on the forest floor, a fire doesn't care is is burning right up to the stream edge. There's no riparian areas left behind it burning all of the organic matter. In on top of that, that soil surface and really changes how soils hold water and, and deliver water to streams. And so you know, aspects of forest harvesting in terms of that leaving some of like a mosaic and patchiness that is what mimics fire, the scale and the types of impacts where those impacts are able to spread to in terms of a riparian area or not right,

David Evans:

there

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

are very, very different things. And so I'm glad we're not mimicking fire with with our harvesting in terms of scale.

David Evans:

That's a huge, huge area to all completely log. So thank goodness, we're not doing that, at that scale, mimicking fire at that scale. And I remember being really surprised when I first learned that there was fires that were like 500,000. Hector's large like that is an enormous area. And a lot of the times, it's because it's in these places that don't have much population. So you don't actually hear it, it doesn't get into the new cycle that much. But as we go further south in Alberta and then into the states, then the population density just increases so much and and then we have so many issues with fire and humans on the landscape. And that kind of leads me into many people might say, well, these wildfires, they're a problem. We just need to control them, we need to make them stop. Is there anything beneficial to wildfires?

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

That's a really important question. And the simple answer is yes. If and I think it's important that that folks hear that. I think we've we've gotten used to like you say the sensationalism earlier you talked about the photos that we may see the images of from catastrophic wildfires and the videos of people fleeing their homes and we really frame fire as bad and certainly there's some negative aspects of wildfire but fires a natural disturbance it's been a honor our landscapes and helping to shape our landscapes for millennia and well before we were here, and we've really influenced that that fire regime and in in a lot of ways and I think we need it's really critical for us to actually think about these things. Think about the positive benefits of fire you know, certainly we have a lot of species for example that are adapted to fire and actually need fire to come through you know, certain pines have sir rottenness cones, and, and that's certainly of the cone is something that needs heat from fire, to open to release the seeds to continue to produce new trees and just that, that thinking about that we need fire on our landscape. As we've talked about before, the release of or fire can release a lot of beneficial nutrients those key building blocks for our systems. nitrogen, phosphorus Carbon, yes, with too much of it can be a problem. But those little boosts of those nutrients into our system can really have positive outcomes for our aquatic ecosystems. And they've actually seen a lot of systems around where we go out and they've retained all of the riparian vegetation and you walk in and it's as dense dark forest and there's no light getting to the stream, you start picking up rocks and looking at the the stream bed, and there's, there's nothing, there's nothing growing there. There's no primary productivity, there's no invertebrates. It's not suitable fish habitat. So just leaving things alone, and you're snuffing out all these fires, because we think fire is bad. You know, in some ways, it's it's not a good thing we need to become comfortable with, with fire. We certainly don't want the large catastrophic fires, but we need to be comfortable with with those fires on the shoulders of the season, and really see the benefits. And one other thing which goes to your previous question about sort of fire mimicking, forest harvesting, and one of the key ways that it does mimic is is that mosaic because I mentioned that you have areas that are burned areas or unburned areas, disturbed areas undisturbed. I have a colleague here, Meg Krawcheck, who is also at Oregon State who also is from Alberta, and went to the University of Alberta work with Mike Flanagan at the University of Florida. So a lot of connections here, but yeah, Meg focuses on looking at these, the patches that survive wildfires, rather than focusing after fires on the burned areas. She focuses on the areas that don't burn and what's unique about those, and they really create a lot of unique habitat because of what they're surrounded by and what they represent. And so there's so many ways that wildfires are beneficial. We just, we just need to get comfortable with that.

David Evans:

Yep, that's it. We just need to get comfortable with that. Just as an aside about the patchiness. I've, I've done a lot of surveying work within the boundaries of the Fort McMurray fire. And that was an enormous fire as well. Yeah, but it was a very patchy fire as well. So we had monitoring units set up for mammals and birds, so trail cameras and, and autonomous recording units. And we had How many did we have, we had, I think about 100 units set up a different spacing throughout different areas of that fire. And we only lost seven units. Because the fire was so patchy and it just happened to fall into the the patches that survived the fire. And it was pretty incredible to us. I came across one of the cameras that was that I picked up myself in one of the little areas that actually faced the burn. And there was images of the fire going up to the trees in front of the trail camera on the trail camera survived, which was incredible. So if people are concerned about impacts of wildfire and how this affects water on the landscape, how can people help? Or are there ways for people to get involved in protection or act mitigating these effects?

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

Yeah, I think I think most locations in in the West in particular, I think in the West, we seem to be very connected to our place. And certainly I know in Alberta and British Columbia and down into Washington State, Oregon. There's lots of watershed stewardship groups in Alberta, you can get some really good ones, the Athabaskan Watershed Council and bow bow River Basin council nurses gatchaman River Basin Council and historically all of those have been interested in being concerned with wildfire effects on on on water. I know when I was there working on with colleagues on fires that occurred on the east slopes of the Rocky Mountains in 2003. That the years after that we had collected data, but most of those councils had had us in for to provide talks and provide information and and so I think that's a great place to start for a lot of folks to really get involved in their area. Increasingly, I think there's also opportunities if people are into it and looking for opportunities, lots of citizen science opportunities. There's lots of different apps out there now that I think helps people feel that connection. And so every time you go on your favorite walk you can sort of log that in terms of a water level or you know is there actually water in the stream or not? And sort of linking that to hearing areas that have burned, I think areas that are burned. In that way, I think a lot of people tend to shy away from them. They know that, oh, if my favorite trail was someplace that burned, I can't go back there, I

Unknown:

don't want to go back there. But actually, it's

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

walking through some of those areas, and continuing to go back to your favorite trail, even though it's burned. I think is is a really cool experience. And you see all these lovely flowers that start to emerge after fire, and that are very unique to that time, and you'll never see them again. And so seeing the forest spring back to life, I think is, is a really cool thing. And, and so you're just gonna, you're not shying away, I know that a lot of communities lose out on sort of that recreational income when areas burn near them. And people don't want to go to those areas. But I would I would, I would flip that around and say, you know, if you haven't done that you should once once it's safe, obviously, the fires are out and we're in into the next season. Visiting those areas is,

Unknown:

is a lot of fun.

David Evans:

I would definitely agree with that. I think a lot of people perceive it just as being kind of a moonscape. After a fire, there should be nothing left. But there's actually a lot left standing. And it's it's a very, it's a it feels very different. But it's a very interesting experience to take someone who's never experienced that into one of those areas. I think it's I think it's very cool.

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

And one of the Yeah, well, there's an aspect that's a little a little sad and unfortunate. It's also really eye opening, there are things where you walk through a burned area, and you see all these remains of unfortunate animals that didn't escape the fire. But it's in some ways is like, Wow, there was a lot of life here. And that life bounces back and a lot of the animals escaped that. And then they come back and, and re populate and colonize, but to be able to go through and walk through those areas. And see some of that is, is a really cool experience.

David Evans:

Definitely. So I for anyone who's listening to this podcast, and they just are so fascinated, they want to learn more about this, where can people find out more about the research that your team is doing? Well, podcasts like

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

this Don't hurt. Thanks for having me. In order, to be honest, I have as a as a scientist, we so much of our focus is on publishing papers in peer reviewed literature. And a lot of that isn't accessible to the general public, unfortunately. And I've really learned that podcasts and blogs and Twitter, most of the folks that that I do science with are on Twitter, and landour have blogs. And of course, obviously, you know searching searching for this on the web, and you'll find some some cool news web pages. I think those are some great ways to communicate and interact with interested members of the public on these sorts of things. And so I think that's a starting point for folks. And hey, if they stumble across my web page, what they're gonna find is perhaps some of the really nerdy science and if they want to get their nerd fix on it's it's all there too. And if you want to dig deeper, but just just general searches is a great way to go on the internet and listening to podcasts like this.

David Evans:

Awesome. So do you mind just sharing the website so people can find it? And maybe even your Twitter handle? So people can interact with you on there too? Yeah, my

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

Twitter handle is at H two O scientist. So at water scientist, the lab website because it's the forest 40 called eco hydrology and watershed science lab. It's at fuse Effie Ws fuse dot forestry dot Oregon state.edu Awesome.

David Evans:

Well everyone definitely go and check out check out the website and if you're on Twitter, let us know that you actually heard this this episode and and that you have a you enjoyed it and what you thought so thank you so much, Kevin for taking the time to speak with me. I really enjoyed our talk. I feel like I learned a lot. And I think our listeners will really enjoy it. Thank you so much.

Dr. Kevin Bladon, Oregon State University:

Thank you as well. I really enjoyed it.

David Evans:

Thanks for tuning into today's episode all about wildfire and water. And thanks also to Kevin Bladon for taking the time to speak with us for this episode. I really appreciate it and it was a great conversation. Thanks again. If you want to get involved in how your watershed is managed, I'll leave a link to all of the different watershed councils in now. Berta down in the show notes, because there's some really fantastic work that's going on by all of these different regional councils. So be sure to go check that out and find which one is closest to you. Also, there will be a link in the show notes to Kevin's lab, the fuse lab, and all of the work that they're doing on wildfire, and its impacts on water systems. I'm the host and producer, David Evans. And I've just like to thank the rest of the team from the aquatic biosphere project, specifically to Paula Polman, Sophie C rvera, and Anna Bettini. Thanks or all of your help. To learn ore about the aquatic biosphere roject and what we're doing ere in Alberta telling the tory of water. Check us out at quatic biosphere.ca. And if you ave any questions or comments bout the show, we'd love to ear them. Email us at onservation at aquatic iosphere.org. Please don't orget to like, subscribe and eave us a review. It really elps us out. Get excited for ext week's episode as we talk bout the future of food. We're oing to examine some different arming techniques that are evolutionizing how we interact ith water and can use it to roduce food. You'll hear from he team from Pontus proteins nd aquaponics company out of ancouver. And you'll also hear rom Mike Williamson from ascadia seaweed on how seaweed s changing the game when it omes to seafood. Tune in you on't want to miss it. Thanks nd it's been a splash