New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

The Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon (HPCC) Wildfire burned over 341,000 acres of land in northern New Mexico in 2022, making it the largest fire in the state’s recorded history. The Upper Gallinas Watershed near Las Vegas, New Mexico was severely impacted by monsoon rains following the fire. Due to the severity of the HPCC fire, as well as the amount of ash and sediment that was washed into the Gallinas River in subsequent flooding events, I hypothesized that bioavailable heavy metal and metalloid concentrations in the Gallinas River were elevated. My research assessed levels of heavy metals in water, sediment, and benthic macroinvertebrate samples from two sites in the Gallinas River. Heavy metal analysis was conducted via inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to determine the concentrations of arsenic (As), aluminum (Al), cadmium (Cd), copper (Cu), mercury (Hg), lead (Pb), and Zinc (Zn) in the respective samples. Heavy metal testing after wildfires is critically important due to the detrimental impacts these elements can have on both ecosystem structure and function as well as on human health. Understanding the effects that wildfires will have on ecosystems, watersheds, and people is vital for securing safe drinking water for New Mexicans, especially when multi-decadal drought and megafires have become the new norm in the age of global-scale anthropogenic climate change.