Improving the Resilience of Water Resources after Wildfre through Collaborative Watershed Management: A Case Study from Colorado KYLE BLOUNT 1 AND ADRIANNE KROEPSCH 1,2 1 Colorado School of Mines, Hydrologic Science and Engineering, Golden, Colorado, United States of America, 2 Colorado School of Mines, Department of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Golden, Colorado, United States of America Email: wkblount@mymail.mines.edu ABSTRACT This case study introduces students to the impacts that wildfres have on water resources as well as the challenges associated with managing these risks. By examining the development of a collaborative watershed group gal- vanized by the 2012 High Park Fire in Colorado, the case engages with the longstanding conundrum of how better to align ecological and social scales in natural resources management. It explores the role that collaborative groups are playing in addressing water resources problems at the watershed scale despite fragmented governance at that scale. A phased case study format allows students to investigate the motivations of diverse stakeholders and appreciate the challenges faced in watershed-based collaboration after a catalyzing event, such as a wildfre. Upon completion of the lesson, students will be able to (1) explain wildfres’ impacts to water resources and stakeholders; (2) assess the chal- lenges and benefts of approaching management based on the physical boundaries of a watershed, rather than political boundaries; (3) identify and interrogate how collaborative watershed groups form as well as the factors that are key to their success; and (4) evaluate the outcomes of these collaborative eforts and their ongoing strengths and opportu- nities as well as their limitations and challenges. This line of inquiry is increasingly signifcant as collaborative water- shed management groups proliferate in the United States, in many instances catalyzed by a disaster. Ultimately, this case study explores how collaborative watershed groups emerge and the role(s) they play in tackling long-term, multi- jurisdictional, and watershed-scale management challenges. INTRODUCTION Wildfire hazards are intensifying globally, exacerbated by decades of wildfire suppression, human development in flammable landscapes, and climate change [1]. The United States saw 10 million acres burned in 2015 and 2017—over triple the average annual acreage from the 1990s—and could face up to 20 million burned acres annually by mid-century, an area the size of Maine [2, 3]. While wildfires are a necessity for fire-evolved ecosystems, they also take a toll on communities that reside within these ecosystems. Arguably, wildfires’ most far-reaching impacts are to water supplies, making them especially threatening for communities that depend on fire-prone watersheds for drinking water [4]. Wildfires generate two difficult and intertwined challenges in this context. From a hydrological perspective, wildfires cause erosion, the export of nutrients and heavy metals, debris flows, and flooding that can negatively impact water quality and water infrastructure from months to years after a burn [5–10]. From a social perspective, wildfires’ threats to water resources are challenging to address because most watersheds are made up of a complex patchwork of public and private land ownerships and because watersheds have both local and downstream dependents. As a result, any given watershed houses a wide variety of stakeholders and institutions with differing values, goals, risk perceptions, responsibilities, and available resources. Mitigating wild- fires’ impacts on water resources therefore involves coor- dinating across spaces that are hydrologically and socially complex. ARTICLE CASE Case Studies in the Environment, 2019, pps. 1–11. electronic ISSN 2473-9510. © 2019 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/cse.2019.sc.960306 1 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/cse/article-pdf/3/1/1/771421/cse_2019_sc_960306.pdf by guest on 18 February 2023