The severity level of the soil moisture state is computed after comparison with long term statistics derived from a long term simulation.
During the 1940s, the region was described as on the verge of economic collapse due to the severity of soil erosion, but concerted soil conservation and education efforts under the political dispensation of the time appear to have averted that scenario.
The PESERA model performed reasonably well in predicting soil losses, but needs a better characterization of soil burn severity in the soil inputs (crusting and erodibility) because of the high sensitivity of the model to these parameters.
The severity of soil WR was always higher under the canopy of trees and usually decreased in bare areas, although bare soils under pine forest showed a proportion of slight to strong water-repellent cases.
The finding of low prevalence of and low levels of internal contamination was unexpected, considering the amount of radionuclides released, the duration of release, and the severity of soil contamination (WHO 2012; Yoshida and Takahashi 2012).
Assessment of the extent and severity of soil salinity in irrigated lands should therefore be treated as other soil factors with spatial variation characteristics, e.g., Carborn stocks (Dlamini et al. 2014).
Map A is a digitized version of the soil burn severity map of the Stanislaus Complex fire which was originally hand-drawn on topographic maps for the initial burned area emergency assessment work.
Perhaps, one of the most telling points is that the development of the soil burn severity map, identification of debris flow hazard areas, and determination of debris flow risk was determined for the Rim fire within the time period required for initial assessment.
The maps are generated using GIS technology, which facilitates the models use of the soil burn severity map as a data source, enables quick comparison to GIS layers containing data on potential elements-at-risk present, and permits transmission of the model results to the geologists conducting the initial post-fire debris flow risk assessment (Staley [2013]; Gallegos et al. [2013]).
