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Three-year post-fire soil erodibility and erosion dynamics in a Mediterranean microbasin
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DOI：10.1002/esp.70362.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Post-fire erosion in Mediterranean environments often persists beyond the first year after burning, yet most assessments focus on short-term responses. This study examines how soil erodibility changes over three post-fire years in a limestone-dominated microbasin in southwestern Türkiye. It evaluates whether widely used empirical soil erodibility (K-factor) equations can represent medium-term post-fire erodibility and how satellite-based surface deformation measurements can assist their interpretation. Soil properties were measured repeatedly across burn severity (BS) classes, slope aspects and slope positions and analysed together with BS indices and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) time series analysis. Unsaturated hydraulic conductivity and shear strength showed strong relationships with K-factors, indicating that these parameters are closely linked to post-fire erodibility changes. InSAR-derived negative vertical displacement rates, interpreted as a proxy for erosion-related surface deformation, increased by 45% in the first post-fire year, peaked at 48% in the second year and declined below pre-fire levels by the third year. These trends indicate delayed soil recovery relative to vegetation regrowth and a gradual reduction in the influence of BS on surface deformation. Among the compared K-factor equations, the equations of Wischmeier and Smith's equation most effectively captured short-term spatial differences between BS classes, whereas the equation of Auerswald et al.'s equation better represented interannual surface deformation trends. In addition, BS- and year-based K-factor multipliers were proposed to estimate the erodibility of burned soils from unburned reference soils. Overall, the results demonstrate that post-fire erodibility evolves over time rather than remaining static and that InSAR provides valuable complementary information for monitoring medium-term erosion dynamics in Mediterranean landscapes.
Keywords:
burn severity
InSAR
Mediterranean landscapes
post-fire erosion
soil erodibility factor
surface deformation
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