Flash Floods and Debris Flows After Wildfire: Process Understanding to Hazard Assessment

Increased wildfire activity and the expansion of urban corridors into mountainous terrain has amplified the potential for postfire hydrologic hazards to threaten human lives and infrastructure around the world. The initiation, magnitude, and mobility characteristics of flash floods and debris flows after fire are shaped by hydrologic, geomorphic, and meteorological factors that may obfuscate uniform mitigation measures, especially under a changing climate. We invite contributions that employ mapping, monitoring, laboratory, or modeling based techniques to facilitate characterization of postfire hydrologic hazards, as well as methods to better forecast their impacts soon after, and in the years following wildfire.