Why Dumping Seawater on Blazes Isn’t the Answer to California’s Wildfire Problem

Our coastal forest showed little effect from the first 10-hour exposure to salty water in June 2022 and grew normally for the rest of the year. We increased the exposure to 20 hours in June 2023, and the forest still appeared mostly unfazed, although the tulip poplar trees were drawing water from the soil more slowly, which may be an early warning signal.

Things changed after a 30-hour exposure in June 2024. The leaves of tulip poplar in the forests started to brown in mid-August, several weeks earlier than normal. By mid-September the forest canopy was bare, as if winter had set in. These changes did not occur in a nearby plot that we treated the same way, but with fresh water rather than seawater.

The initial resilience of our forest can be explained in part by the relatively low amount of salt in the water in this estuary, where water from freshwater rivers and a salty ocean mix. Rain that fell after the experiments in 2022 and 2023 washed salts out of the soil.

But a major drought followed the 2024 experiment, so salts lingered in the soil then. The trees’ longer exposure to salty soils after our 2024 experiment may have exceeded their ability to tolerate these conditions.

Seawater being dumped on the Southern California fires is full-strength, salty ocean water. And conditions there have been very dry, particularly compared with our East Coast forest plot.

Changes Evident in the Ground

Our research group is still trying to understand all the factors that limit the forest’s tolerance to salty water, and how our results apply to other ecosystems such as those in the Los Angeles area.

Tree leaves turning from green to brown well before fall was a surprise, but there were other surprises hidden in the soil below our feet.

Rainwater percolating through the soil is normally clear, but about a month after the first and only 10-hour exposure to salty water in 2022, the soil water turned brown and stayed that way for two years. The brown color comes from carbon-based compounds leached from dead plant material. It’s a process similar to making tea.