Post-Wildfire Sediment Transport Modeling Versus Observed: Some Northern Arizona Examples

Post-wildfire floods are receiving greater attention as the urban-forest interfaces become more common and as wildfires have increased due to record drought in the American Southwest. Sediment sourcing, transport, and deposition in the post-fire environment has also received attention due to the large amount of property damage and risk of life caused by debris flows and super concentrated sediment flood flows. This study provides a series of sediment model predicted outflows based on ERMIT, BANCS, MUSLE, and FLOWSED/POWERSED for the 2019 Museum Fire watershed (Spruce Wash), 2010 Schultz Fire (multiple watersheds), and preliminary observations from the 2022 Pipeline Fire (Schultz Creek and multiple watersheds on the eastern flank of the San Francisco Peaks). The modeled results are compared to flood observations that provide a comparison of the models to real-world events. A comparison is also provided for the cloud-based WEPP post-fire sediment model.