Progress 09/01/23 to 08/31/24
Outputs
Target Audience:In this period, we continued to work closely with our community partners from California, particularly our test site in Lake County. This includes Emergency Services from the Lake County Sheriff's Office, Lake County Office of Education, and the Sacramento Police Department. Further, we held our third annual meeting at our test site (Lake County, CA) on September 12-13, 2024. The meeting was a great success, with 14 team members from 6 institutions attending. Each team member presented their progress over the past year, as well as their plans for the final year of the project. Please see the attached report for a detailed summary of the meeting. It was fascinating to see the progress made by different parts of this multidisciplinary research and how the results are starting to be disseminated to the community. Changes/Problems: Change: In early 2024, we requested a one-year no-cost extension, which was approved, setting the new end date of the project to August 30, 2025. The extension was requested due to delays caused by COVID, as well as a change in the PI during the project. The no-cost extension was granted, allowing the team to complete the anticipated tasks in the final year of the project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?1 postdoc and 3 graduate students are working on the project. The project provides professional development opportunities for 3 early career faculty members in the research team as well. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We upgraded and updated our project's website to enhance visibility and further disseminate results. https://cascadinghazards.com Some of the results obtained by the research team have been directly incorporated into the latest version of Lake County's Local Hazard Mitigation Plan Update 2023. Specifically, see Section 6.7 and 9.2 on pages 62 and 78, as well as Figure 7-10 on pages 79-81, which were generated by our research team: https://www.lakesheriff.com/DocumentCenter/View/7095/2023-HMP-Full-5-11-23?bidId= The Lake County Cascading Hazards Unit for grades 6-10 was published on the Center for Education, Engagement and Evaluation (formerly CIRES Education & Outreach) website. https://ceee.colorado.edu/resources/lake-county-cascading-hazards-unit We successfully held our teacher workshop. We held an in-person teacher workshop on Saturday, December 9th at the Taylor Observatory in Kelseyville. We recruited teachers from Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Yolo, Sonoma, Glenn and Colusa Counties for the workshop. The workshop was attended by eight middle and high school teachers, and the Lake County Office of Education Science Coordinator. Lake County Emergency Manager, Leah Sautelet, and the project PI, Farshid Vahedifard, also presented at the workshop. Workshop evaluations were glowing, teachers commented that they enjoyed getting to learn directly from scientists, and that they all plan to use the curriculum in their classrooms. One teacher said: "Thank you this was an amazing experience." What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We will share the results from focus groups in academic and public spaces and through the publication in academic journals. We will complete landslide susceptibility mapping in Lake County and compare changes in landslide areas before and after fire. We plan to develop a follow-up survey for our second wave of data collection to be administered in the winter after the 2024 fire season has ended. The Survey Research Center at Pennsylvania State University will contact those individuals who participated in the Wave 1 survey and invite them to complete a second survey to assess their psychological responses, behaviors, and experiences during and after the 2024 wildfire season. We will continue to work on enhancing the management of Wildland Urban Interfaces (WUI) by integrating updated remote sensing techniques, fire risk assessments, and evaluations of building vulnerabilities. We will continue monitoring Weather Stations in Burned and Unburned Areas, to Continue collecting Temperature (ªC), Wind Speed (m/s), Rainfall (mm), and Soil Moisture Content (%) at the three weather stations. We will continue calculating Cache Creek Landslide Displacements and correlating them with rainfall and creek flow using Persistent Scatterers techniques. Displacement vs Time Analysis of Cache Creek Landslide is performed using Persistent Scatterers. We will work on the analysis and plotting of the USGS Cache Creek flow data and correlating it with calculated displacements and rainfall. We will work on expanding our analysis to incorporate key characteristics of shelters, such as ADA compliance and capacity, into our measurements of shelter access. These efforts will further enhance our understanding of shelter accessibility and inform strategies for improving community resilience to natural hazards. The pilot teacher and local Lake County teacher, Crystal Lee, will be presenting the curriculum at the California Science Education Conference in Sacramento, November 8-10. Lake County Office of Education Science Coordinator Jennifer Kelly will assist with the presentation.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Performed bi-weekly and monthly barnstorming meetings with the research team and our community partners Held our third annual meeting with the entire research team and community partners on September 2024 Updated and improved the project website (https://cascadinghazards.com/) Performed regional-scale analysis to evaluate the effect of wildfires on the stability of unsaturated slopes The behavioral science team from UC Irvine focused on cleaning and coding data collected from the first wave of a survey of a representative sample of adult residents from Lake County, California. After removing those respondents who did not meet eligibility requirements (i.e., living in Lake County at the time of completion, age 18 yrs or above, and consenting to participation) and removing those who had an unacceptable level of missing data (i.e., did not complete at least 50% of the survey questions), the final sample size of the Wave 1 data collection was 813 participants. Demographics of our final sample closely resemble 2022 population estimates for Lake County, CA (U.S. Census, 2022). Specifically, our sample's mean age is 55.67 yrs (SD=16.33, range 18-89), almost 58% are female, about 82% are White, 10% Hispanic, 5% Native American, 3% Asian/Asian American, 2% Black, and the remainder other or unknown ethnicity. Over the past year, we have been analyzing both qualitative and quantitative data collected. The first paper examined the correlates of prior wildfire-related loss or injury and residents' reported levels of anxiety, depression, and climate-related anxiety at the start of the 2023 wildfire season. Results suggest that prior exposure to wildfire-related loss or injury increased individuals' risk for development of psychological symptoms as a new wildfire season began and highlight the need for measures to protect and address the mental health of those repeatedly exposed to wildfire threat. These findings were reported in a poster presented by a UC Irvine undergraduate honors student at the annual meeting of the Western Psychological Association in San Francisco in May (Liu et al., 2024). A second project has examined participants' answers to survey questions in which they were asked about the positive features of living in Lake County, despite their repeated exposure to the threat of wildfire. Two graduate students on the team created a codebook for themes found in the data and two students were subsequently trained to manually code all the entries. Results of a pre-registered analysis of these data link respondents' prior experiences of disaster exposure (to wildfires, floodings, or landslides) to the perceived positive aspects of living in the county. Results will be delivered in an oral presentation in September at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (Tao et al., 2024). An article reporting these findings is also planned for submission to a peer-reviewed journal in the fall. A third paper, delivered at the Natural Hazards Center Researchers Meeting in Broomfield, Colorado in July (Estes, 2024), reported on results from our assessment of respondents' awareness of their evacuation zone. Despite the fact that data were collected at the start of the wildfire season after an active information campaign conducted by emergency managers and the Sheriff's Department, results indicated that over 70% of the sample either indicated that they did not know their zone, or they reported it inaccurately. An article reporting the results of this analysis and its implications will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal over the next several months. Finally, in a final pre-registered analysis, a fourth paper is being prepared to examine the predictors and correlates of climate anxiety among residents for a special issue of BMJ Mental Health on Climate Attributable Mental Health, Impacts and Interventions, in fall, 2024. The progress made in real-time Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) mapping, fire risk assessment, and building vulnerability evaluation represents a significant step forward in enhancing Wildland Urban Interface management. We focused on enhancing the management of WUI by integrating updated remote sensing techniques, fire risk assessments, and evaluations of building vulnerabilities. The objective is to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of WUI mapping and wildfire management strategies to mitigate the risks posed by the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires. The team made progress in real-time WUI mapping, the assessment of fire risks, and the evaluation of factors contributing to building damage in WUI areas. The WUI-RS map, with its comprehensive coverage and precise risk identification capabilities, offers a valuable tool for wildfire mitigation efforts. Continued research and the integration of advanced drone-based technologies will further improve our understanding of wildfire risks and inform the development of targeted management strategies to protect communities in WUI areas. We continued collecting field monitoring data for landslide monitoring and analyzing the collected data. We collected various in situ data as well as satellite imagery data to analyses weather data, soil moisture and landslide deformation. We successfully measured access to shelters for Lake County, CA, providing valuable insights into the region's preparedness for natural disasters. Second, we finalized a manuscript based on focus groups with emergency managers, which explored the obstacles and opportunities in combating cascading hazards. Third, our team actively participated in focus groups with residents to gain a deeper understanding of their firsthand experiences with cascading hazards, enriching our data with valuable community perspectives. There were no issues that delayed the progress of the project this year. We created simple multi-temporal landslide inventory of Lake County, CA. Using this data to infer post-fire landslide susceptibility. We created map of landslide susceptibility for lake county. Working to create equivalent post-fire landslide maps.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Vahedifard, F., Abdollahi, M., Leshchinsky, B. A., Stark, T. D., Sadegh, M., & AghaKouchak, A. (2024). Interdependencies between wildfire?induced alterations in soil properties, near?surface processes, and geohazards. Earth and Space Science, 11(2), e2023EA003498
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Vahedifard, F., Abdollahi, M., Leshchinsky, B. A., Stark, T. D., Sadegh, M., & AghaKouchak, A. (2024). Interdependencies between wildfire?induced alterations in soil properties, near?surface processes, and geohazards. Earth and Space Science, 11(2), e2023EA003498.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Desai, A., Guilloteau, C., Heilman, W. E., Charney, J. J., Skowronski, N. S., Clark, K. L., & & Banerjee, T. (2024). Investigating FireAtmosphere Interaction in a Forest Canopy Using Wavelets. Boundary-Layer Meteorology, 190(5), 21.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Kumar, M., Kosovi?, B., Nayak, H. P., Porter, W. C., Randerson, J. T., & Banerjee, T. (2024). Evaluating the performance of WRF in simulating winds and surface meteorology during a Southern California wildfire event. Frontiers in Earth Science, 11, 1305124.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Baijnath-Rodino, J. A., Martinez, A., York, R. A., Foufoula-Georgiou, E., AghaKouchak, A., & Banerjee, T. (2023). Quantifying the effectiveness of shaded fuel breaks from ground-based, aerial, and spaceborne observations. Forest Ecology and Management, 543, 121142.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Turco, M., Abatzoglou, J.T., Herrera, S., Zhuang, Y., Jerez, S., Lucas, D.D., AghaKouchak, A., & Cvijanovic, I. (2023). Anthropogenic climate change impacts exacerbate summer forest fires in California. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(25), e2213815120.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Peethambaran, B., & Leshchinsky, B. (2023). Application of landslide susceptibility towards urbanization suitability zonation in mountainous settings. International journal of disaster risk reduction, 97, 104061
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
https://cascadinghazards.com/
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Liu, V., Estes, K. D., Vahedifard, F., Holman, E. A., & Silver, R. C. (2024, April), Wildfires, loss, and mental health: A survey of residents in a high-risk California county. Poster presented at the annual meeting of the Western Psychological Association, San Francisco, CA.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Estes, K. D. (2024, July). Understanding evacuation zone awareness in high-risk disaster areas. Paper presented at the Natural Hazards Center Researchers Meeting, Broomfield, CO.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Tao, T. J., Estes, K. D., Holman, A. E., & Silver, R. C. (2024, September). Perceiving the positives beyond wildfires experiences: A survey of residents in a high-risk California county. Flash talk presented at the annual meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Boston, MA.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Katya Schloesser, Megan K. Littrell, Alicia Christensen, Kathryn Boyd, Anne U. Gold . (2023, December) Place-Based Strategies for Community Climate Resilience in Classrooms of the Rural Western US AGU Fall Meeting. San Francisco, California, United States.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2024
Citation:
Thompson, D. (2024). Challenges and Opportunities of Emergency Managers and Vulnerable Groups Experiencing Wildfires: Some Lessons from Rural California. Southern Rural Sociological Association Annual Conference. February 4th 2024, Atlanta, Georgia.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Leshchinsky, B. (2024). Evaluating the Evolving Controls on Post-Fire Debris Flows in Western Oregon. Establishing Directions in Post-Fire Debris Flow Science Conference. May 22, 2024. Lake Taho, California.
|
Progress 09/01/22 to 08/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience:In this period, we continued to work closely with our community partners from California, particularly our test site in Lake County. This includes Emergency Services from the Lake County Sheriff's Office, Lake County Office of Education, and the Sacramento Police Department. Further, we held our second annual meeting at our test site (Lake County, CA) in September 2023. In this 2 day meeting, we closely worked with our community partners and visited the site. We shared our findings and path forward with them and sought their input and suggestions. We aimed to identify disadvantaged communities in our study area and learn more about needs, perceptions, information shortfalls, etc. to deal with wildfires and cascading hazards associated with them. Further, we were invited by Nick Widmer, Manager of Lake County's Community Disaster Risk Reduction Program at the American Red Cross, to attend and present at the Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD) meeting on Friday, September 29. Our team delivered a 30-minute presentation in the presence of several community leaders participating in Lake County's Community Disaster Risk Reduction Program. Please see the attached report for a summary of the presentations made during the meeting. Changes/Problems:Change: The lead Principal Investigator (PI), Farshid Vahedifard, moved to Tufts University in August 2023. At that time, Dr. Diego Thompson assumed the PI role at Mississippi State University (MSU) for the last year of the project. Farshid Vahedifard will remain engaged in the project through a subcontract issued to Tufts University. Dr. Thompson has agreed to become responsible for coordinating MSU activities with the other co-PIs, senior personnel at other institutions, and community partners working with the team. He will also be responsible for managing project schedules and completing reports on the MSU side. Farshid Vahedifard will closely work with him to ensure he has all the required documents and information. Dr. Thompson has been an integral member of the research team since the project's inception, consistently collaborating with both the research team and community partners. As a result, he possesses a comprehensive understanding of all the project's requirements, progress, and intricate details. The paperwork and formal request to change the PI and issue a subcontract to Tufts University have been submitted to NIFA on October 9, 2023. Challenges: The measure of auto access to shelters does not take into account the characteristics of the shelters (e.g., capacity, ADA compliance, ventilation). The research team has sought data from the American Red Cross to produce more practical access measures. The recruitment of participants for focus groups represented a significant challenge. Three of the initial dates for focus groups had to be postponed because of lack of enough participants. One of the cancelled focus groups (on February 24th 2023) was going to be in-person and had to be postponed the same day because of a winter storm affecting Lake County, making it difficult for participants to attend. This event made us to rethink the in-person format of the focus groups so we decided to conduct all the focus groups via Webex. Since we have shared the information about the focus groups through multiple venues and we are having the focus groups on-line, many people have contacted us to participate but this has required a significant amount of work screening their eligibility. In most cases people were not eligible to participate. Difficulties to complete some of the pathways we have attempted to better understand landslide hazards in Lake County. However, better use of Machine Learning techniques has enabled better pathways for evaluating these hazards. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?1 postdoc and 3 graduate students are working on the project. 2 PhD students working on the project graduated recently. The project provides professional development opportunities for 3 early career faculty members in the research team as well. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?- We held our second annual meeting at our test site (Lake County, CA) in September 2023. In this 2 day meeting, we closely worked with our community partners and visited the site. We shared our findings and path forward with them and sought their input and suggestions. Further, we virtually meet with our community partners every month to discuss our results. - We were invited by Nick Widmer, Manager of Lake County's Community Disaster Risk Reduction Program at the American Red Cross, to attend and present at the Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD) meeting on Friday, September 29. Our team delivered a 30-minute presentation in the presence of several community leaders participating in Lake County's Community Disaster Risk Reduction Program. Please see the attached report for a summary of the presentations made during the meeting. -Presentation: USFS Post-fire Monitoring Symposium in Corvallis, OR (Feb. 9, 2023) -Presentation: USGS Landslides Hazards Seminar (Sep. 7, 2022) What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Continue to improve landslide mapping in Lake County and compare changes in landslide areas before and after fire. Develop simple statistical post-fire landslide susceptibility model based on observed data. In year 3, we will analyze the transcripts from the focus groups, evaluate whether additional data collection is necessary, share the results in academic and public spaces, and submit a journal article. We will broaden the "access to shelter" analysis by (i) integrating the characteristics of shelters into the auto access measures, and (ii) synthesizing the socioeconomic and demographic profiles of residents in at-risk communities who face both limited access to shelters and a high risk of wildfire. We are continuing to work on understanding risk at the WUI, additionally incorporating data on building damage. We are analyzing data collected on prescribed burns using drones. Another set of fieldwork is being used to understand the flammability of common shrubs and ornamental plants typically used in community-scale landscaping. We will incorporate edits from teach feedback into the curriculum, and will publish the curriculum on the CIRES Education & Outreach Curriculum Library, with a link to the project website, in fall 2023. We are currently planning an in-person teacher workshop on Saturday, December 9th at the Taylor Observatory in Kelseyville. We plan to recruit teachers from Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Yolo, Sonoma, Glenn and Colusa Counties for the workshop. We will also include a discussion of this project in a presentation submitted to the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco December 10-15. Other activities include the submission of the curriculum to the Climate Literacy, Energy, and Awareness Network (CLEAN) Curriculum Library for review, and a presentation to the California Association of Science Educators. We plan to develop a follow-up survey for our second wave of data collection to be administered in the winter after the 2023 fire season has ended. The SRC will contact those individuals who participated in the Wave 1 survey and invite them to complete a second survey to assess their psychological responses, behaviors and experiences during the 2023 wildfire season. We will continue monitoring Weather Stations in Burned and Unburned Areas, to Continue collecting Temperature (ªC), Wind Speed (m/s), Rainfall (mm), and Soil Moisture Content (%) at the three weather stations. We will continue calculating Cache Creek Landslide Displacements and correlating them with rainfall and creek flow using Persistent Scatterers techniques. Displacement vs Time Analysis of Cache Creek Landslide is performed using Persistent Scatterers. We will work on the analysis and plotting of the USGS Cache Creek flow data and correlating it with calculated displacements and rainfall.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Performed bi-weekly and monthly barnstorming meetings with the research team and our community partners Held our second annual meeting with the entire research team and community partners on September 2023 Designed and launched the project website (https://cascadinghazards.wordpress.com/) Performed regional-scale analysis to evaluate the effect of wildfires on the stability of unsaturated slopes Completed workflow for creating preliminary landslide inventory in Lake County. Conducted the following focus groups: People working with senior, AFN, and low-income residents in Lake County (CA). Three participants. April 7th. People working with senior, AFN, and low-income residents in Lake County (CA). Three Participants. May 4th. People working with low-income Hispanic residents who primarily speak Spanish in Lake County (CA). Six participants. August 25th. People working with members of Tribal groups in Lake County (CA). Four Participants. September 15th. We are currently analyzing the data generated from the focus groups to evaluate whether additional focus groups are necessary. Calculated access to emergency shelters for Lake County. The access measure includes automobile access with 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 minutes travel time. The research team augmented the generated auto access to shelters with wildfire risk measured by the National Risk Index. The product is a planning map identifying "priority areas" and "at-risk communities" for reducing vulnerability to wildfire. The results of the analysis are under review in Landscape and Urban Planning. Identified the seasons and biomes that exhibit significant (1980-2019) changes in fire danger potential, as quantified by the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI). Explored what types of fire behavior potentials may be contributing to changes in fire danger potential, as quantified by the United States Energy Release Component (ERC) and the Ignition Component (IC). Provided spatiotemporal insight on how fire danger potential and fire behavior potential are responding in relation to changes in seasonal precipitation totals and seasonal mean air temperature across biomes. In the second year of the project, we developed a two-week unit for middle and high school classrooms in Lake County. The driving question for the unit is: How can we help our community be more resilient to cascading hazards? The unit includes four lessons, beginning with a visioning lesson that uses trauma-informed practice, followed up a three day lesson that introduces local datasets showing hazard risk and prevalence and including several local stories about resilience and hazard recovery in Lake County. Students also investigate current conditions to develop an understanding of the environmental conditions that relate to risk. In the last two lessons, students engage with a StoryMap that explains that different factors of social vulnerability, and then develop a two-minute video for social media that highlights ways for their community to be better prepared for the cascading hazards. Three middle and high school teachers piloted and reviewed the curriculum in spring of 2023, and filled out evaluation surveys and met with our team to discuss their feedback. Our behavioral science team from UC Irvine focused on the development and fielding of a survey of a representative sample of adult residents from Lake County, California. The survey was updated from the previous year's draft, informed by insights from the 2022 Lake County in-person meeting with our community partners. The project and survey materials were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of California, Irvine. We then contracted with the Survey Research Center (SRC) at Pennsylvania State University to have our survey programmed and tested. Starting on June 27, 2023, the survey was fielded to a representative sample using address-based sampling of Lake County residents, offering online and paper-based options in both English and Spanish to ensure inclusivity. Although participation started out slowly, we developed a project website that highlighted the legitimacy of the project, and the project website was promoted by our community partners via their social media pages. Through persistent outreach from the SRC using follow-up emails and postcard communication, participation increased over time. The survey closed after six weeks on August 11, 2023. A deidentified data set was provided to our research team from the SRC about two weeks later. After removing people who did not meet eligibility requirements (i.e., living in Lake County at the time of completion, age 18 yrs or above, and consenting to participation) and removing those who had an unacceptable level of missing data (i.e., did not complete at least 50% of the survey questions), the final sample size of this first wave (Wave 1) of data collection was 814 participants. The demographics of our sample closely resemble 2022 population estimates for Lake County, CA (U.S. Census, 2022). Specifically, our sample's mean age is 55.67 yrs (SD=16.33, range 18-89), almost 58% female, about 82% White, 10% Hispanic, 5% Native American, 3% Asian/Asian American, 2% Black, and the remainder other or unknown ethnicity. Field monitoring of burned area: Compare data retrieved from Weather Station #1 (Burned Area) with Weather Station #2 (Unburned Area), which are about one-half of a mile apart: 1) From the weather station data analyzed it is observed the accumulated rainfall in the unburned area (Weather Station #2) is 15% greater than for the burned area (Weather Station #1) but both have similar rainfall trends. For the period 12/14/2022 through 06/14/2023 the accumulated rainfall for the unburned area (Weather Station 2) is 670 mm while for the burned area (Weather Station 1) is 580 mm, 2) It is observed the mean ambient temperature for the burned area is slightly greater than for the unburned area due to a smaller amount of vegetation, 3) The soil moisture content at various depths for the unburned area are lower than those for the burned area except for depths of 12 and 20 inches, which may be due to different soil types. I am planning to sample the soils at each depth during my next site visit to confirm the soil types. 4) A general trend is observed and shows that as the mean temperature increases, the soil moisture content decreases, 5) Regarding wind speed, the data shows little variation between the two monitoring sites with a wind speed between 1 and 2 meters/second. Cache Creek Landslide Monitoring: Analysis of the displacements calculated for the landslide scarp from Google Earth imagery: 1) Google Earth imagery was retrieved from 07/1985 through 04/2021, 2) Heavy rainfall periods in the 1990s and early 2000s in Lake County area appear to have induced significant movement of the Cache Creek landslide. Movement was significant enough to be captured by the low resolution photos available in Google Earth. Calculation of landslide displacement at six different locations in the slide mas were used to assess the magnitude and direction of slide movement. The calculated displacements along the surface of the slide mass show the toe and scarp have experienced a steady increase in displacement with time. As a result, the middle of the slide mass is continually moving. We employed an observation-based approach to quantitatively assess the interactions between snow and fire, investigating the mechanisms underlying the spatial heterogeneity of fire-induced shifts in Land Surface Temperature (LST), albedo, radiative forcings, and evapotranspiration.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Abdollahi, M., Vahedifard, F., Tracy, F. T. (2023). Post-Wildfire Stability of Unsaturated Hillslopes against Rainfall-Triggered Landslides. Earth's Future, AGU, 11(3), e2022EF003213, DOI: 10.1029/2022EF003213.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Baijnath-Rodino, J. A., Le, P. V., Foufoula-Georgiou, E., & Banerjee, T. (2023). Historical spatiotemporal changes in fire danger potential across biomes. Science of the Total Environment, 870, 161954.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Chowdhuri, S., and T. Banerjee, 2023, Revisiting bursts in wall-bounded turbulent flows, Physical Review Fluids, 8, 044606.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Desai, W. Heilman, N. Skowronski, K. Clark, M. Gallagher, C. Clements, and T. Banerjee, 2023, Features of turbulence during wildland fires in forested and grassland environments, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 338, 109501.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Baijnath-Rodino, J.A, A. Martinez, R. York, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, A. Aghakouchak, and T. Banerjee, 2023, Quantifying the effectiveness of shaded fuel breaks from ground-based, aerial, and spaceborne observations, Forest Ecology and Management, 543, 1211142.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Abdollahi, M., Vahedifard, F., Tracy, F. T. (2023). Stability Analysis of Unsaturated Slopes Stricken by Wildfires. Proc. Geo-Congress 2023: Geotechnics of Natural Hazards, Geotechnical Special Publication No. 338, Los Angeles, CA, March 26-29, ASCE, Reston, VA, 599-609, DOI: 10.1061/9780784484654.059.
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
https://cascadinghazards.wordpress.com/
|
Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:In this period, we worked closely with our community partners from California, particularly our test site in Lake County. This includes Emergency Services from the Lake County Sheriff's Office, Lake County Office of Education, and the Sacramento Police Department. Further, we held our annual meeting at our test site (Lake County, CA) in July 2022. In this 2 day meeting, we closely worked with our community partners and visited the site. We shared our findings and path forward with them and sought their input and suggestions. We aimed to identify disadvantaged communities in our study area and learn more about needs, perceptions, information shortfalls, etc. to deal with wildfires and cascading hazards associated with them. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?1 postdoc and 3 graduate students are working on the project. The project provides professional development opportunities for 3 early career faculty members in the research team as well. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We held our annual meeting at our test site (Lake County, CA) in July 2022. In this 2 day meeting, we closely worked with our community partners and visited the site. We shared our findings and path forward with them and sought their input and suggestions. Further, we virtually meet with our community partners every month to discuss our results. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Install in situ sensors and weather stations for field monitoring Characterize the interplay among wildfire and related cascading hazards Study the fire resilience in managed landscapes and Wildland Urban Interfaces (WUI) Model debris flow and landslides Conduct community survey and focus groups Develop K-12 curriculum Study changes in snowpack-wildfires
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Performed bi-weekly and monthly barnstorming meetings with the research team and our community partners Held our first annual meeting with the entire research team and community partners on July 2022 Identified 4 test sites for field instrumentation Developed an analytical framework to evaluate the effect of wildfires on the stability of unsaturated slopes Studied snow-fire dynamics changes over the years Mapped the wildland-urban interface in California Developing sediment transport-based models Collected information for curriculum development Studied psychological consequences of cascading hazards Designed community survey and received IRB approval
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Li, S., Dao, V., Kumar, M., Nguyen, P., & Banerjee, T. (2022). Mapping the wildland-urban interface in California using remote sensing data. Scientific reports, 12(1), 1-12.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Vahedifard, F., Abdollahi, M., Kellogg, J. M., Leshchinsky, B. A., Stark, T. D., Sadegh, M., AghaKouchak, A. (2022, under review). Interdependencies between Wildfire-Induced Alterations in Soil Properties, Near-Surface Processes and Geohazards. Nature Geoscience (In Review, submitted August 29, 2022)
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Abdollahi, M., Vahedifard, F., Tracy, F. T. (2022, under review). Post-Wildfire Stability of Unsaturated Hillslopes against Rainfall-Triggered Landslides. Earth's Future, AGU (In Review, submitted September 16, 2022).
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Awaiting Publication
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
Abdollahi, M., Vahedifard, F., Tracy, F. T. (2023). Stability Analysis of Unsaturated Slopes Stricken by Wildfires. Geo-Congress 2023, Los Angeles, CA, March 26-29 (Accepted).
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