The effect of wildfires on the composition of bottom sediments of rivers and lakes in urbanized areas of the Middle Amur lowland

Wild fires is an important factor in the functioning and transformation of geosystems. The aim of the study is to assess the impact of fires on the aquatic ecosystems of urbanized areas of the Middle Amur Lowland (within Khabarovsk Krai). The tasks of the work are to assess the burnability and pyrogenic transformation of the territory based on the analysis of long-term earth remote sensing (ERS) data series and to analyze the composition and patterns of post-pyrogenic changes in the bottom sediments of the key site (basin of the Simmi River, small tributary of the Amur River). Cloudless data of free access from Landsat 5, 7 and 8 satellites for 37-yr (1984 – 2020) were used to determine the average long-term characteristics of wildfires and trends in their changes. ERS processing was carried out by the expert decryption method in the ArcGIS 10.5 program.

The analysis of allocated wild fires indicates a significant scale and high repeatability of pyrogenic effects on the geosystems of the territory. Grass fires affected from 27 to 35 % of non-forest ecosystems, exceed 50 % in some years, which is comparable to the areas of forest fires. But according to official data, due to the imperfection of the methods of automatic mapping of the burnt-out territory, non-forest fires in the region account for only 8.9 %.

The bottom sediments were studied in the key site. Sampling (15 samples, according to standard methods) was carried out in May 2018 (in the third year after the autumn fire of 2016) and in July 2019 after the spring (March–April) fire. The main research methods were granulometric and gross chemical analyses and scanning electron microscopy (VEGA 3 LM scanning electron microscope, TESCAN, Czech Republic). The granulometric composition was determined by laser diffraction on a particle size analyzer (SALD-2300, Shimadzu, Japan). The gross composition was determined by X-ray fluorescence method (Pioneer S4, Bruker AXS, Germany). Our data indicate that the passage of grass fires in the catchment area entails a change in the chemical composition of BS formed in the post-pyrogenic period. In the first months after the fire, the reaction of the river system is the sequestration of soluble P compounds, which are formed during “fire” mineralization. This occurs as a result of the binding of phosphate ions into vivianite. It is precipitated on the surface of clay-ferruginous microaggregates of a suspended sediment fraction, which over time (2-3 years) is carried out by the stream. The latter leads to a reduction in the scale of the impact of the fire.

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