GEOMORPHIC RESPONSE TO WILDFIRE IN AN ARID WATERSHED, CROW CANYON, NEVADA

Abstract

On August 28, 1981, the Crow Canyon drainage basin in central Nevada was burned by a lightning-generated wildfire that destroyed the vegetation cover consisting primarily of juniper trees, sagebrush, and desert grasses. The geomorphic impact of the wildfire was assessed on the basis of aerial photography, measurements of sediment movement on hillslopes using charred tree trunks as erosion indicators, and surveys of the valley floor, axial channel, and alluvial fan. Aerial photographs indicate the valley floor was untrenched prior to the fire. The combination of foliage destruction and heavy runoff in the spring following the wildfire initiated channel downcutting that has now reached as much as 3.9 m in depth. Entrenchment of the valley-fill in the lower 2.2 km of the drainage network produced as much as 48, 142 m3 of sediment. Much of the channel incision occurred during 1982 and 1983, years characterized by above-normal precipitation. Approximately 17,608 m3 of sediment were deposited on a preexisting alluvial fan at the mouth of the basin. Following initial channel entrenchment and deposition on the fan, a spatially out-of-phase episode of channel cutting was initiated on the fan apex, a process that is redistributing sediment down-fan. Thus, one geomorphic disturbance has produced two discrete depositional events on the fan. Moreover, the geomorphic instability was still evident over a decade after the wildfire. [Key words: wildfire, degradation, channel entrenchment, soil erosion, complex-response.]