My name is Diane Hopster and I'm a hydrologist for the Columbia River Gorge
National Scenic Area and the Mount Hood National Forest. I also worked as a
hydrologist on the Burned Area Emergency Response team or the BAER team. A BAER
team is a team that gets together with a lot of different disciplines like
engineering, hydrology ,wildlife biology, fisheries biology, soil scientists. They
get together and they assess the fire after it's mostly out, to look at what
kind of emergency response activities need to be implemented and a lot of it
is focused on reducing erosion and preventing any major landslides or
debris flows. Post fire erosion is determined by combination of climate
topography including slope surface rock armoring needle caster litter fall and
fire severity/ The Eagle Creek FIre area has two kind of distinct soil types that
we see there's the very rocky talus slope terrain, and then there's these
more well-developed soils. In the rocky talus slope we have a lot of surface
rock armoring which actually helps reduce erosion, though pre-fire a lot of
these slopes were covered in moss that kind of held the rock together and then
after the fire in the high burn severity areas on these talus slopes that moss
burned away so it did result in over steepened slopes and we did see
localized rock sliding and we may continue to see that until the moss
regrows. In the well developed soil areas we're actually finding some natural
revegetation of native plants as well as some fungal mats that are kind of
binding the soil together. Due to the very steep terrain and the
inaccessibility of most of the Eagle Creek fire area, and that is in part
due to the fact that most of the fire area was in wilderness, it's difficult to
do a lot of the erosion controls that we would probably do on areas with a lot
more roads that's more accessible and not in wilderness areas. As far as
the very steep terrain it can cause safety issues, trees falling, hazard trees
things like that, so we don't like to put people in that situation. Lucky for us we
have a very resilient landscape in the Eagle Creek Fire area. We're already
seeing a lot of natural revegetation as well as after the burn there's a lot of
litter fall and debris you can see that there's needle cast as well as burned
trees that fall over and they add roughness which actually helps to create
like a natural mulch and reduce erosion itself. Some of the recommendations that
the BAER team made for reducing post-fire erosion on the Eagle Creek
Fire included improving drainage on the few roads within the Eagle Creek Fire
area. And by improving drainage, because roads intercept surface flow they tend
to concentrate flow and then it will create landslides or debris flows, and so
by improving the drainage you're spreading the flow out and keeping it
from concentrating and resulting in erosion that could go down slope and
into stream channels and affect fisheries down below. There were also a
lot of recommendations within the Multnomah Falls area that gets a lot of
people from all over the world. It's really important that rock-fall is
prevented that either damage the historic structure there, the Multnomah
Falls Lodge, and then also protect the people that are there to look at the
waterfall. The recommendations at the Multnomah Falls site included what you
could call geotextiles they're basically Rock catchment fencing, that when rocks
do fall down the steep slopes that have burned ,it's gonna stop those and then
they actually have to be cleaned out on a regular basis. Here is a good example of a
steep slope that we see in the Eagle Creek Fire area, it's not really a safe
place to go and try to plant anything. But you can see that the fire burns like
in these mosaics so that vegetation that didn't burn can then spread to the area
where it did burn and that helps with revegetation as well. Erosion can be a
very natural process for example when we have fine sediments erode down the slope
and into the stream they deposit in floodplains and then are quickly
colonized by vegetation native vegetation like willows and cottonwoods
and things like that that actually stabilize the channel so fine sediments
can be a very good thing and natural processes can affect and improve water
quality sometimes. When erosion is caused by non natural processes is when we get
more than the system can handle and that's why we focus some of our
recommendations on things like the road where it's unnaturally concentrating
flows that could then erode downslope and add more sediment than the system
can necessarily handle. Right now we look at the landscape and we see a lot of
black charred soils, not a lot of vegetation but ultimately in the spring
we'll probably start seeing a lot of little green sprouts coming on this hill
slope vegetation that can handle this type of environment will start growing
and then ultimately once it has established then new vegetation will
move in and ultimately we'll end up with the native vegetation and the type of
forest and environment we had before the fire and the ecosystem here is able to
basically regenerate itself it knows better than we do how to get back to the
state it was in prior to the fire.