Wildfire and Water Quality: Processes, Impacts and Challenges

Abstract

There has been increasing global concern over the impacts of landscape disturbance by wildfire on a range of aquatic ecosystem services and drinking water supply. Profound and often irreversible changes in river ecosystem function, geomorphology, water quality and water supply occur due to the severity and magnitude of wildfire-related landscape disturbance. Such impacts have important management implications for source water supply and protection at the catchment scale. A conference on Wildfire and Water Quality: Processes, Impacts and Challenges was held in Banff Alberta, Canada, 11-14 June 2012, to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields of hydrology, sediment transport, water quality and watershed management. The goals of the symposium were to improve knowledge of the impacts of large-scale landscape disturbances by wildfire on freshwater ecosystems and better elucidate processes that influence the source, transport and fate of sediment associated contaminants in the aquatic environment. The symposium was sponsored by the International Committee on Continental Erosion (ICCE) of the International Association for Hydrological Sciences (IAHS), the Government of Alberta, Alberta Innovates - Energy and Environment Solutions, ADAS (UK) and the University of Waterloo.