<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:14pt"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 32px; font-weight: bold; ">Reverse Effect: Wildfire Smoke Can Cool Rivers</span><br></div><div style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; "><div style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; "><div class="y_msg_container"><div id="yiv2554251052"><div><div class="yiv2554251052WordSection1"><div class="yiv2554251052date"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Cambria, serif; "><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.opb.org/news/article/reverse-effect-wildfire-smoke-can-cool-rivers/">http://www.opb.org/news/article/reverse-effect-wildfire-smoke-can-cool-rivers/</a></span></div><div class="yiv2554251052date"><span lang="EN">Herald and News | Aug. 27, 2013 6:36 p.m. | Updated: Sept.
13, 2013 12:57 p.m. </span></div><h2><span lang="EN">Contributed By: DEVAN SCHWARTZ</span></h2><div><span lang="EN">One of Will Harling’s first memories is the 1977 Hog Fire in Northern California. Fire burned the forest behind the cabin where he was born.</span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10.5pt; font-family: Georgia, serif; "></span></div><div><span lang="EN">Ten years later, in the Siege of ’87, nearly 200,000 acres burned through the footprint of the Hog Fire and beyond. Amid all the flames and smoke, Harling remembers how cool it felt.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">The smoke inversion dropped both air and water temperatures below 60 degrees. “That was the first summer we didn’t even want to swim in the river it was so cold,” Harling said.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">Wildfires typically call to mind flames, smoke, fire lines cut by firefighters in leather boots.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">But it
turns out that wildfires may also help cool water.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">Harling, now executive director of the Mid-Klamath Watershed Council, said wood smoke deflects sun rays and lowers the temperature of air and water.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">Case in point: Earlier this year, chinook were dying in Klamath River tributaries, Harling said. But near the end of July, two large wildfires ignited, cooling the water. Fish stopped dying at such high rates.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">“In addition to stopping spring chinook from dying, lower water temperatures triggered fall chinook to come into the mainstem Klamath River and then into the tributaries,” Harling said.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">Cooler water triggers salmon to swim upstream from the Pacific Ocean and seek out spawning grounds.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">Taz Soto, lead fisheries biologist for the Karuk Tribe, says fires near the
Klamath River have dropped the water temperature by about 10 degrees. Ten degrees can make a big difference for salmon. And that change could be partly because of wildfire.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">“One positive thing that’s come out of all the wildfires this year is it’s cooled off the river. The media rarely talks about the positive things about fires and that’s one of them,” Soto said.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">This smoke is so heavy Soto compares it to fog. He says you can’t see your shadow and the sun can’t shine through.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">“It’s a relief for the fish but not for the people who have to breathe it in,” he said.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">Michael Hughes, who directs Oregon Institute of Technology’s environmental sciences program and formerly worked for the Klamath Tribes, says shade helps cool water, the most common being clouds, vegetation hanging over
streambanks, or smoke.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">Volcanic eruptions are an extreme example. Hughes says major eruptions cause major cooling. Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991 and global temperatures dropped, bucking a warming trend.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">Hughes describes even stronger cooling effects caused by the Mount Mazama eruption, which created Crater Lake.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">“Mount Mazama would have had more intense impacts on temperature and climate. It would have likely induced a global dip in temperature by a degree or two for a year or two,” Hughes said.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">To be clear, Hughes is not advocating lighting wildfires to fix warm streams and rivers. Nor does he think the next massive volcanic eruption will do the trick.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">So what can be done in the short term? Hughes says re-vegetating streams and rivers can
shade the water and help cool it down.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">Soto says watersheds have evolved around a natural fire cycle, and fire provides more benefits than drawbacks.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">Soto acknowledges drawbacks of human- and lightning-caused fires, but advocates for controlled burns and more active forest management.</span></div><div><span lang="EN">And he says more research is needed on how smoke affects water temperature and salmon spawning.</span></div><div class="yiv2554251052MsoNormal" style="line-height:13.5pt;"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;"># # # </span></div><div class="yiv2554251052MsoNormal"> </div></div></div></div><br><br></div> </div> </div> </div></body></html>