Snow, Water, Fire, Oh My!

In this installment of interviews with UPP Seed Grantees, I had the pleasure of talking with Kelly Gleason (PSU) and Sylas Daughtrey (USGS) whose research is concerned with the impacts of forest fires on snow and water cycles here in the Pacific Northwest. Kelly and Sylas are at the core of a growing snowball rolling towards goals commonly found within the scientific community, namely the improvement of knowledge and scientific praxis—and thereby the improvement of societal management—alongside the goal to educate and prepare the next generation of researchers and practitioners.

Kelly and Sylas’s research program is focused on how hydrologic processes play out following a major disturbance, and specifically in this case forest fires. By collecting data on the ground and over time, they are able to extrapolate statistical models, which, when extensively simplified, can be implemented operationally by state and federal agencies to result in improved decision making capabilities towards the benefit of the water users, albeit for recreation or business. In other words, forest fires upstream impact downstream water availability and quality which needs to be taken into account when determining end-user water allocations and/or infrastructure development projects.

The first snowflakes of this research program are to be found in Sylas’s graduate studies, and when those crystalline structures found congruent shapes in Kelly’s research interests, along with the ice-cold environment of the UPP Seed Grants, a small snowball began to form. As this snowball began to roll down the mountain it dropped off a few monitoring devices around the Columbia River Gorge including the areas burned in the Eagle Creek Fire which track snowmelt and stream characteristics, like temperature. More snow began to cling to the now sizable research program as more researchers, including from the Army Corps, sought to provide support and learn from the research outcomes.

The mountain hasn’t been all fresh powder for our intrepid researchers. Overarching hardships stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic have paired with systemic challenges of a cross-institutional partnership, creating moguls and often icy conditions. Kelly argues that everything is slower when working across institutions, especially when working to acquire money through federal agencies. Sylas and Kelly have relied on patience and trust to overcome the initial challenges of establishing a collaborative agreement. The team’s resilience paid off with the establishment of a five-year partnership agreement with the Army Corps. 

With their momentum now appearing unstoppable, the snowball is poised to create an avalanche of knowledge and skills development. Kelly and Sylas plan on hosting yearly workshops in the lecture hall and out in the field to provide exposure to students and build connections with USGS researchers. The federal collaboration agreement has the added benefit of funding three graduate students, and Kelly’s lab has an oncoming PHD student ready to develop models from the team’s data. We here at UPP are confident that Kelly and Sylas’s research will result in durable and profound changes to the landscape of hydrologic knowledge.