Unveiling soil temperature reached during a wildfire event using ex-post chemical and hydraulic soil analysis.

Wildfires affect different physical, chemical, and hydraulic soil properties, and the magnitude of their effects varies depending on intrinsic soil properties and wildfire characteristics. As a result of climate change, the frequency and intensity of wildfires have increased, and understanding their impact and predicting the temperature to which soils were exposed in previous events is becoming increasingly critical. Hence, the objectives of this study were to develop a soil-heating laboratory procedure to (a) identify changes in soil properties at different temperatures and (b) to infer the temperature ranges to which heated soils have been exposed.

Differential arsenic binding in the sediments of two sites in Chile's lower Loa River basin.

Fluvial sediments from two lower Loa River basin sites in northern Chile were compared in order to probe the effects of vegetation and organic matter (OM) on As accumulation in fluvial environments. The two sites were the Sloman dam, which lacks macrophytes and has a low OM content (2.4%) in sediments, and the Quillagua Oasis, which is 23 km downstream from the Sloman site and has a higher OM (6.