Erosion risk to water resources in fire and rainfall regimes

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Fire Note 90: Erosion and local flooding after fire in mountainous terrain can have adverse impacts on water resources and infrastructure.

An understanding of landscape vulnerability to fire impacts provides the basis on which to predict erosion once a fire has already occurred.  However, there are few (if any) studies that aim to quantify changes in risk over time under variable fire and rainfall regimes.

This Fire Note, by University of Melbourne Bushfire CRC Research Fellow Petter Nyman,  provides a summary of the factors that determine the level of risk under different fire and rainfall regimes.  It then presents a conceptual model of risk and provides a framework for incorporating fire and rainfall processes in the representation of risk.

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