Hydrosedimentological Impact Modeling of Forest Fires

Abstract

Results of the simulations with TREX model in La Suela river basin (province of Cordoba) are presented. It aims to analyze the impact of wildfires in hydrographs and sedimentographs of that basin, caused by the first postfire rain. TREX is a distributed hydrological model designed for event simulation.
It can represent several hydrological and sedimentological processes. Dependency between the change ratio in hydrograph and concentrogram peaks, basin area, and two heuristic-based indexes, was analyzed. It shows a better correlation in runoff volume with area rather than peak flows. We conclude that TREX model gives valuable information to analyze the response of mountain basins of Cordoba to its frequent fire events.