EESA Research Scientist Erica Woodburn has initiated a new effort to investigate the impact of the Caldor Fire on the Cosumnes River Basin. The team, which involves EESA research scientist Michelle Newcomer and faculty scientist Jackie Peña, has already begun working to measure water quality and ash/sediment in collaboration with a local citizen science field campaign led by the The American River Conservancy at locations across the watershed, and observation-informed post-fire simulations will be used to identify locations most susceptible to flooding, erosion, and potentially debris flows in the years following the fire. Woodburn’s research under an early-career LDRD (FY18-20) was already focused on hydrologic dynamics across the Sierra Nevada-Central Valley interface, including the Cosumnes River Basin which has been heavily impacted by this year’s Caldor Fire. In previous studies under this early-career LDRD, researchers modeled the Cosumnes River watershed, which extends from the Sierra Nevadas, starting just southwest of Lake Tahoe, down to the Central Valley, ending just north of the Sacramento Delta, to help shed light on how wildfires can impact water availability.
