Mitigating Wildfire Impact on Water Quality through Climate-Based Financing: A Case Study of the Provo River Watershed

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Following wildfires, riverine water quality in forested watersheds is prone to degradation, impacting drinking water treatment and potentially causing increased emissions because of additional electricity consumption. We explore the potential for climate-based financing to support wildfire mitigation and watershed restoration and thereby reduce potential water treatment energy demand within the Provo River watershed of Utah, USA. Pre-and post-wildfire erosion and water quality in the Provo River is modeled using GeoWEPP. Energy data from the Don A. Christiansen Regional Water Treatment Plant in the watershed and related literature data are used to estimate the increase in energy use for treating degraded water. We find that most watershed areas are not subject to large treatment demand changes, but a few hotspots are prone to increased sediment. In the Provo River watershed, on average, a fire in a single 12-digit hydrologic unit code sub-watershed corresponds to an additional 350 metric tonnes of carbondioxide-equivalent emissions for one year following a wildfire event due to increased energy by the water treatment plant. If wildfire risk is reduced, the avoided emissions can generate a potential of $88,500 annually in carbon credit revenue (at $10/CO2e credit) for the HUC8 subbasin contributing to water treatment. Synopsis This study demonstrates a method for modeling pre-and post-fire erosion and connects the impacts to energy use and emissions associated with a downstream drinking water treatment plant.

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