Abstract | Erosion, flash floods and debris flows are hydro-geomorphic processes that intensify due to catchment
disturbance by wildland fire. Predictive models of these processes are used by land managers to quantify reha-
bilitation effectiveness, prioritize resources andevaluate trade-offs between different managementstrategies.
Predictions can be difficult to make, however, because of heterogeneous landscapes, stochastic rainfall, and
the transient and variable fire effects. This paper reviews hydro-geomorphic response models for burned
areasandexploreshowmodellingapproachesandsourcesofuncertaintychangedependingonthefocusques-
tion (or purpose) and the associated spatial-temporal scale of the model domain. The review shows that cur-
rent models focus primarily on predicting catchment responses during a recovery period (within-burn
timescales), a relatively short temporal window during which rainfall is an important source of uncertainty.
At longer (between-burn) timescales, the fire regime itself, and not just fire severity, becomes a variable com-
ponent of the model. At this temporal scale, the catchment processes respond to variations in the frequency
and severity with which a landscape is conditioned (or ‘primed’) by fire and rain storms. Conditioning is a sto-
chastic process that is determined by the spatial-temporal overlap of fire disturbance and rain storms. The
translation of overlaps to hydro-geomorphic responses is a function of intrinsic catchment attributes
(e.g. permeability, slope and catchment area). Capturing the stochastic interplay between fire and rain storms
is important when land-management questions shift towards the issues of climate change and landscape-scale
interventions such as prescribed burning. The review therefore includes a discussion on fire and rainfall
regimes as variables which drive decadal and regional variability in hydro-geomorphic processes |