RAPID: Scientific Impacts from Erosion Following the Medano Creek Fire, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado

Colorado School Of Mines, Golden CO

Investigators

Abstract

The June 2010 Medano fire in Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado burned 6000 acres of the upland portion of a large watershed and was still smoldering as winter set in. Several small rainstorms in the following months had significant erosion impacts in these upper watersheds, and it is expected that spring snowmelt runoff and larger summer thunderstorms in 2011 will have more dramatic and widespread effects that may affect the visitor?s area. The early months of 2011 offer a unique opportunity to track the debris flow and sediment-laden flood responses in a wilderness area that has not been burned in more than a century. The project will measure the coupling between runoff and erosive response prior to and during vegetation re-establishment, create a predictive hazards map for the watershed, and characterize surficial materials and relate them to types of mass movement. The proposed work will advance understanding of post wildfire erosion processes and the role of wildfire in landscape evolution, provide decision tools such as hazard maps for the National Park Service to address safety and other concerns, and provide an educational component for the general public through materials provided in the Park.