Rainfall recharge thresholds decrease after an intense fire over a near-surface cave at Wombeyan, Australia

Song, Christina; Campbell, Micheline; Baker, Andy

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-4241-2025

Articles | Volume 29, issue 17

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-4241-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-4241-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 29, issue 17

Research article

|

09 Sep 2025

Research article |

| 09 Sep 2025

Rainfall recharge thresholds decrease after an intense fire over a near-surface cave at Wombeyan, Australia

Christina Song, Micheline Campbell, and Andy Baker

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-29-4241-2025-supplement

Data sets

Wildman's Cave drip hydrology 2014-2017 Andy Baker https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28169672.v1

Short summary

Groundwater can be replenished by rainfall that percolates from the surface to the water table. The amount of rainfall that is needed to generate this groundwater recharge is hard to measure. We determined this rainfall amount by identifying recharge events as water percolates from the surface, through a cave. During our monitoring, an intense fire occurred above the cave, and we were able to quantify any change in the amount of rainfall necessary to generate recharge before and after the fire.