Assessing the Impact of Wildfire Smoke on Water Quality

Slocum Glider Storm Petrel equipped with a LISST (Sequoia Scientific) is deployed in Lake Tahoe under the cover of smoke from the Caldor Fire in California (Photo: Kenny Larrieu)

Smoke from the Caldor Fire (orange dots) over Lake Tahoe.

(Imagery from NASA Worldview)

UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center is monitoring the distribution of particulate matter in lakes across California - both before and after wildfires. We are deploying Laser In-Situ Scattering and Transmissometry instruments as profilers and incorporated into the payload of our Slocum Glider Storm Petrel. The data we collect tell us about the size, concentration, and distribution of suspended sediments. These sediments may be brought to lakes by wildfire smoke.

My Role

Here I have been providing piloting advice as we troubleshoot the implementation of the new LISST glider sensor, and developing scripts to process the LISST Data.