Approximately 17 million animals die each year because of wildfires and those that survive are heavily affected by them. These fires release very fine ash particles into the air which are the most impactful on an animal’s health, such as breathing. The effect of ash on freshwater plants was recently studied and showed the ash negatively impacted their development . There is a great deal of information on the negative impacts wildfires can directly have on terrestrial organisms. However, there is very minimal research on the effect ash has on the development of aquatic species such as Artemia salina, commonly known as brine shrimp. This study was designed to investigate the effect of frequent exposure to wildfire ash had on the developmental rate of Artemia salina. The brine shrimp were divided into four groups, control, and three experimental groups with ash concentrations of 25%, 50%, and 75%. All groups were evaluated for their development and survival and four pictures were taken of each separate group evaluation for 10 days over a 12 day period. The results concluded that exposure to ash had a negative impact on the development of the brine shrimp. These results support previous research performed using aquatic plants. Thus, this study shows it is important to consider the impact of wildfires on the aquatic ecosystem as well.

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