Wildfires with moderate to high burn intensities affect watersheds by increasing runoff and erosion due to losses in interception, infiltration, and soil litter. Increased sediment loads impact biota, drinking water supplies, reservoirs, and estuaries. Increases in nutrient export, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus, can adversely affect downstream water quality by fostering algae booms and reducing oxygen.

Increased sediment loading can occur in form of debris torrents, shallow landslides, and bank sloughing, or from rills and gullies. Turbidity Threshold Sampling (TTS) is an efficient method for capturing the suspended fraction of the transported load. And turbidity can be a suitable surrogate for phosphorus.