The impact of forest fires on sediment connectivity in the semiarid region

Abstract

Forest fires, intensified by human activities, are transformed into environmental disasters and affect biomes that are not naturally adapted to fire, such as the Caatinga. With the advent of climate change and the increasing number of fires, it becomes necessary to understand their impact on surface environmental dynamics, including sedimentological processes. One way to analyze these changes is through sediment connectivity, which refers to the physical linkages that enable the potential transfer of sediments across the landscape. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the impacts of fire through sediment connectivity, using remote sensing imagery from before and after the fire events and applying connectivity and vegetation indices. The results show a 14% increase in connectivity values in the study area, which is proportional to the fire's intensity. Vegetation indices indicate a slow recovery of the area. Finally, limitations were observed in the use of proposed roughness input values for burned areas, as well as in the natural recovery capacity of the Caatinga, which, even after four years, had not returned to pre-fire levels.