Wildfire & Biodiversity

Nolan Gentile and Conor Kramer

Nolan Gentile and Conor Kramer investigated the impact of recent wildfires on the geomorphology of streams between February 2022 and 2023 and how these changes in geomorphology affect the overall biodiversity of amphibian, reptile, and insect species in the Santa Monica Mountains. In recent years, numerous stream sites that had previously been the source of the laboratory's experiments were burned from fires, raising questions about the health status of the amphibian, reptile, and insect communities inhabiting these streams. They focused on determining the species richness of frogs, newts, lizards, snakes, and numerous insects as well as analyzed the streams themselves, measuring the physical composition and dimensions as well as water flow, pH, water and air temperature, and turbidity to identify any noteworthy correlations.