Title: Fire and Earth

Name: Aubrie Powell

School: Los Alamos Middle School, Los Alamos, NM, USA

I became interested in erosion when a fire happened on a road near my house. The fire was located on State Road 4 near Tsankawi ruins. I wanted to find out what the effects of fire were on erosion. I predicted the fire would burn vegetation so less organic material would be in the soil of the burned area. Also, water could carry the soil more easily. I conducted two experiments after collecting six soil samples from each of the burned area and unburned area right next to it. In the first experiment I weighed 350 gm of soil and separated the fine material, organic material, and rocks and weighed them. In the erosion test I made a platform for 300 gm of soil and poured 250 ml of water over it. I rinsed out the run-off collected in a dish and added water to the mixture up to 500 ml and weighed it. The average weight of organic material in the burned samples was 67 gm and for the unburned samples it was 23. So my hypothesis was wrong, or I did not accurately capture the organic material. The average weight of the 500 ml of run-off for the burned area was 510 gm and for the unburned area it was 507. I was mostly correct in my hypothesis on the run-off water but the difference is too small to support my hypothesis well. I would like to try the erosion test at a larger scale, possibly on site. Six months might have been too long after the fire, so I would like to investigate another more recently burned area. Also I would like to compare the open area samples with the samples near trees. I hope to represent LAMS well at the regional science fair.