Laserfiche WebLink
<br />Where affected drainage basins and subbasins included various burn severities and unburned areas, post- <br />burn RCNs were area-weighted by the percentage of each burn type. A summary of post-burn calibration <br />data (RCNs, abstractions, lag-time factors) for all Willow Creek subbasins is listed in Appendix table lb. <br />Table 2 shows the 6 Willow Creek basins that were modeled and the results of the post-burn runoff <br />calibrations. <br /> <br />Long-Term Recovery Hydrology <br /> <br />Long-term recovery of burned watersheds is based on a method developed in Elliott and others (2005). <br />Hydrologic responses in Willow Creek were computed to evaluate peak flows at a point in the post-burn, <br />long-term recovery period (Phase 3). <br /> <br />Hydrologic responses during the post-fire recovery period are estimated in the Willow Creek burned areas <br />based on the following assumptions: <br /> <br />1. A wildfire will raise the RCN in a burned drainage basin from a pre-fire RCN to a post-fire RCN as a <br />function of burned area and severity. <br /> <br />2. During the recovery period, the value of the larger post-fire RCN will attenuate with time and eventually <br />approach, or decay to, the value of the smaller pre-fITe RCN. <br /> <br />3. Although it is recognized as a simplification, for the purposes of this report, recovery will be <br />characterized as a decay function that reduces the post-fire RCN with time. <br /> <br />4. Initial decay will be the most rapid and will take place as a function of the magnitude of the pre-fire <br />RCN and the difference between pre- and post-fire RCN's. <br /> <br />The post-fire recovery equation used in this study is a function of initial RCN, change in RCN (due to <br />wildfire), and time. The equation has the form of an exponential decay equation that can be used to <br />estimate an RCN at any point in the recovery process. In this analysis, the equation (Elliott and others, <br />2005) was used to develop estimates for parameters used in the HEC-l and HEC-HMS models, and the <br />models were then used to develop a time series of annual flood peaks of the 100-year design storm to <br />characterize long-term recovery. The resultant time-series values were evaluated to identify a time in the <br />recovery process when the change in estimated 100-year flood peak became less than 5 percent, per year, of <br />the RCN change due to wildfire. <br /> <br />At Willow Creek, the long-term recovery hydrology was estimated to be in effect after about 5 years <br />(Elliott and others, 2005). HEC-HMS input parameters (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2001b) for <br />individual subbasins were calculated for year 5 to enable HEC-HMS modeling of peak flows (Appendix <br />table lc. Discharge results from these analyses were used as input for hydraulic analysis. Peak discharges <br />were not bulked assuming that recovery flows would not contain large sediment loads. The recovery <br />parameters also were used with the 10-, 50-, and 500-yr rainfall amounts to compute peak discharges for <br />the corresponding peak discharge recurrence intervals (table 3). <br />