Post-wildfire terrain evolution in an alpine area

In a climate change scenario, natural disasters as wildfires and their consequences are expected to increase. Besides the loss of vegetation, wildfires have severe effects over mountain environments, frequently affecting slope stability and eventually provoking further economic losses and casualties. The risen probability of flash flooding and debris flow is recognized to depend on a modification of the soil hydrological properties, in particular of the soil infiltration capacity, in burnt terrains. Past studies identified different trends of soil infiltration recovery after fire, depending on the site environmental characteristics and on the original soil conditions. Even though wildfires are common in the Alpine area, studies on the hydrological impact of wildfires are mainly from the US, Australia and partly from the Iberian Peninsula. This work aims to investigate the impact of a wildfire occurred in 2019 in the Southern Alps and to retrieve recovery trends for the calibration of a simple 1D hydrogeological model. The effects of the wildfire and their variations over time were evaluated on three different spatial scales: satellite imagery, field monitoring (infiltration tests) and laboratory rainfall simulations.