{"id":77581,"date":"2026-04-13T07:43:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T14:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=77581"},"modified":"2026-04-13T07:44:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T14:44:36","slug":"wildfires-and-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wildfires-and-water\/","title":{"rendered":"The effect of wildfires on the water you drink"},"content":{"rendered":"

We know\u00a0wildfires\u00a0pollute the air we breathe\u2014but a new study shows they can\u00a0also\u00a0pollute\u00a0the water we drink.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Siyu Pan<\/span><\/b>, assistant professor\u00a0in\u00a0NAU\u2019s\u00a0Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting, has been\u00a0researching\u00a0the impact of wildfires on drinking water quality\u00a0since\u00a02023.\u00a0Last\u00a0year, under\u00a0a\u00a0Joint Venture Agreement (JVA)\u00a0from the U<\/span>.<\/span>S<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0Forest Service and along with her\u00a0research team, she published\u00a0<\/span>a study about community water systems exposed to wildfires in the western United States<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that showed how\u00a0vulnerable communities are more prone to wildfire exposure.\u00a0Now, with the same\u00a0JVA, she is\u00a0looking\u00a0at the social cost wildfires have\u00a0on\u00a0drinking water.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDrinking water quality could be impacted by wildfires through various channels,\u201d Pan said.\u00a0\u201cSome water gets polluted through sediments caused by wildfires that sink into the water. Other\u00a0times, when wildfires burn a lot, they\u00a0bring up\u00a0old pollution from the soil, which we call legacy pollution,\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>that sinks into the water too. Air pollution caused by wildfires also has an impact on\u00a0drinking\u00a0water through the intrusion of smoke and soot into the water. Another way in which the water is\u00a0impacted\u00a0by fire is through changes in water and ambient temperatures during and\u00a0after\u00a0fires, which might overwhelm the water treatment process.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0research\u00a0also\u00a0looked\u00a0at how\u00a0those impacts\u00a0differ\u00a0between\u00a0communities with a higher poverty rate\u00a0and\u00a0those\u00a0with\u00a0a\u00a0lower\u00a0poverty rate. The results:\u00a0<\/span>T<\/span>he quality of drinking water after a wildfire is worse in areas where minorities and lower-income communities live.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe know wildfires worsen drinking water quality, but different communities have different capacities for cleaning up their water,\u201d\u00a0Pan said.\u00a0\u201cThey also have different\u00a0initial\u00a0environmental conditions; some are just more resilient to\u00a0worsened\u00a0drinking water quality. The implication is clear: the social cost of wildfire is larger than we thought\u2014we need to consider the worsening of drinking water quality as an important part of the social cost of wildfires and how that burden is shared unequally among different communities.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0JVA\u00a0has\u00a0allowed different disciplines\u00a0to work together on the study. Pan said they are all trying to get a comprehensive picture\u00a0<\/span>of the<\/span>\u00a0physical\u00a0and social\u00a0ways\u00a0in which\u00a0water\u00a0pollution can damage\u00a0<\/span>people and\u00a0communities.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a collaborative effort,\u201d Pan said. \u201cEconomists\u00a0are at the\u00a0downstream, while\u00a0at the\u00a0upper stream,\u00a0they\u00a0had\u00a0a lot of environmental engineers,\u00a0chemists,\u00a0statisticians\u00a0and others\u00a0working\u00a0on\u00a0understanding the physical part of this.\u00a0We build on their research results by adding the human\u00a0component\u00a0to understand the\u00a0physical impacts\u00a0and\u00a0the impacts\u00a0on the community.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0next step\u00a0may\u00a0be\u00a0estimating\u00a0a monetary value to wildfires’ impact on water quality. With the help of economic models and statistical tools,\u00a0Pan is hopeful that her team\u2019s\u00a0work\u00a0will help stakeholders gain a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the full costs that wildfires impose.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/a>Mariana Laas | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-5050 | mariana.laas@nau.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We know\u00a0wildfires\u00a0pollute the air we breathe\u2014but a new study shows they can\u00a0also\u00a0pollute\u00a0the water we drink.\u00a0 Siyu Pan, assistant professor\u00a0in\u00a0NAU\u2019s\u00a0Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting, has been\u00a0researching\u00a0the impact of wildfires on drinking water quality\u00a0since\u00a02023.\u00a0Last\u00a0year, under\u00a0a\u00a0Joint Venture Agreement (JVA)\u00a0from the U.S.\u00a0Forest Service and along with her\u00a0research team, she published\u00a0a study about community water systems exposed to wildfires…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":77582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}