Optical in-situ sensors capture dissolved organic carbon (DOC) dynamics after prescribed fire in high-DOC forest watersheds
Christopher I. Olivares
A B , Wenbo Zhang B C , Habibullah Uzun B D , Cagri Utku Erdem B , Hamed Majidzadeh C E , Carl Trettin F , Tanju Karanfil B and Alex Chow B C G
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 760 Davis Hall, 94720, USA.
B Department of Environmental Engineering and Earth Science, Clemson University, 342 Computer Court, Anderson, SC, 29625, USA.
C Biogeochemistry and Environmental Quality, Clemson University, 177 Hobcaw Road, Georgetown, SC, 29440, USA.
D Department of Environmental Engineering, Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey.
E Department of Science, Southern New Hampshire University, 2500 North River Road, Manchester, NH, 031006 USA.
F Center for Forested Wetland Research, USDA Forest Service, 3734 Highway 402, Cordesville, SC, 29434, USA.
G Corresponding author. Email: achow@clemson.edu
International Journal of Wildland Fire 28(10) 761-768 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF18175
Submitted: 4 October 2018 Accepted: 13 August 2019 Published: 15 October 2019
Abstract
Fires alter terrestrial dissolved organic carbon (DOC) exports into water, making reliable post-fire DOC monitoring a crucial aspect of safeguarding drinking water supply. We evaluated DOC optical sensors in a pair of prescribed burned and unburned first-order watersheds at the Santee Experimental Forest, in the coastal plain forests of South Carolina, and the receiving second-order watershed during four post-fire storm DOC pulses. Median DOC concentrations were 30 and 23 mg L−1 in the burned and unburned watersheds following the first post-fire storm. Median DOC remained high during the second and third storms, but returned to pre-fire concentrations in the fourth storm. During the first three post-fire storms, sensor DOC load in the burned watershed was 1.22-fold higher than in the unburned watershed. Grab samples underestimated DOC loads compared with those calculated using the in-situ sensors, especially for the second-order watershed. After fitting sensor values with a locally weighted smoothing model, the adjusted sensor values were within 2 mg L−1 of the grab samples over the course of the study. Overall, we showed that prescribed fire can release DOC during the first few post-fire storms and that in-situ sensors have adequate sensitivity to capture storm-related DOC pulses in high-DOC forest watersheds.
Additional keywords: first-order watershed, forest management, prescribed burn, Santee Experimental Forest, South Carolina.
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