Life is full of decisions—paper or plastic, regular or decaf, one lump or two—and we make most of them without much thought. But some choices are more important than others—which college to attend, what car to buy, how to invest that million-dollar lottery win—and when it matters, you try to make an informed decision.
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Fire as friend... Prescribed burns, like this one conducted in the Chena Lakes area of Alaska in 2001, help reduce accumulations of flammable fuels, like grasses. (Photo by Chris Figenshau) |
Informed decisions are the goal of DRI's Program for Climate, Ecosystem and Fire Applications, a multi-agency partnership focused on providing the best possible information to fire management officials nationwide. By investigating and interpreting the relationships among climate, weather, fire and natural resources, the program helps these decision makers with crucial issues like controlling wildland fires, planning safe and effective prescribed burns and efficiently coordinating resources in a busy fire season.
DRI climatologist Dr. Tim Brown established the program in 1998, collaborating with the Bureau of Land Management and other federal and state land management agencies and now leads a team of eight researchers and students: assistant research scientists Beth Hall, Hauss Reinbold and Domagoj Podnar; post-doctoral research associate Dr. Julide Kora´cin; graduate research assistants Ryan Kangas, Crystal Kolden and Tesfamichael Ghidey; and BLM Agency Representative Paul Schlobohm.
The program includes about a dozen agencies, among them the National Interagency Fire Center, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, California Air Resources Board, San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, State of New York Department of Environmental Conservation, Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's Office of Global Programs.
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It's a dirty job ... Crystal Kolden after a day spent working the 2000 Manter Fire in Sequoia National Forest . |
The result, Brown says, is a uniquely effective partnership. “As far as I know, we are the only atmospheric sciences full-time academic group in the country dedicated to working with the fire agencies and providing products.” That straight-forward relationship means those agencies can quickly reap the benefits of the latest in climate research, computer modeling techniques and forecasting tools as they manage that most fickle of forces, fire.
According to the National Interagency Fire Center, a 100-year policy of suppressing all fires in this country has ironically led to conditions where today's wildland fires tend to be larger, burn hotter and spread farther and faster, making them more severe and more costly in human ecologic and economic terms. In 2003, federal agencies spent more than $1 billion fighting fires, which still burned nearly five million acres across the U.S. In northern Nevada , fire hit especially hard last July with the Waterfall Fire destroying 17 homes in Carson City and blackening more than 8,700 acres.
But there is a positive side to fire as well. Regular fires help sustain functioning, healthy ecosystems by maintaining balanced plant communities, releasing vital nutrients and creating opportunities for regrowth and renewal. “Fire is a natural part of our environment, and so are humans,” Brown says. “We need to learn to live with fire, not only to mitigate against undesirable events, but also to use it to our own and the ecosystem's benefit.”
Understanding, controlling and benefiting from fire begins with understanding the factors that influence its behavior. Despite its relentlessness, fire is subject to the same physical laws as everything else on this planet. Its behavior is dependent on specific and quantifiable factors such as temperature, humidity, available fuel and winds. Brown's work focuses on studying these factors and producing products that help visualize their effects on fire danger and behavior. “We're here to provide as much weather and climate information as we can to make forecasting as effective as possible.”
That information comes in the form of unique products and services like lightning data archives, vegetation and fuel information, climatological maps and data, fire weather forecasts, seasonal assessments and training, all designed to keep decision makers a step ahead. “For instance,” Brown says, “the Energy Release Component Index helps the National Interagency Fire Center provide forecasts of fire danger out to 10 days. They can say, ‘Hey, it looks like the southeast may have a problem,' and they can pre-position resources there to be ready for a potential fire.”
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Fire as foe . Protecting homes and communities at the urban/wildland interface is just one of the crucial tasks facing fire managers. This photo shows a residence threatened by the Skeleton Fire in Bend , Ore. in 2000. (Photo by Tom Iraci) |
The program works, Brown says, because products and services are created specifically for the end users, most often at their request. “This makes them directly applicable to the decision-making process. The user determines how the product should look, including the functionality and appearance. We incorporate the science into the product and provide training for its use.”
There is also a strong research component to the program. “We're investigating things that will ultimately help improve forecasts. For instance, winds in a complex environment are a big issue. Humidity is another critical factor, and one thing builds on another. A good humidity forecast means a good fuel moisture forecast, which is important for determining fire danger and behavior,” Brown says. “We're also looking at the role and impact of drought on fire and fuels management, which is obviously a big issue here in the West.”
Of course, where there's fire, there's smoke, and that's one of the main concerns of a newly formed group within the program, the California and Nevada Smoke and Air Committee. The committee is composed of 12 federal, state and county agency members within the two states who deal with wildland fire, smoke and air quality issues. The committee was formed to help turn forecasting and predictive tools toward the troublesome issues of smoke and air quality stemming from prescribed burns, as well as agricultural burning and wildland fires.
“The idea of a regional forecast system was first conceived probably in 1999,” Brown says, “when fire and agriculture agencies in California realized there would be a lot of value in having higher resolution predictive models and better forecast data to meet their needs, much of which included planning for prescribed burns.”
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DRI's CEFA team gathers around a computer screen to check out new data. Standing, left to right, are Dr. Tim Brown, Crystal Kolden, Dr. Julide Kora´cin, Domagoj Podnar and Tesfamichael Ghidey. Seated, left to right are Ryan Kangas, Beth Hall and Hauss Reinbold. (Photo by Heather Emmons) |
Prescribed burns are a common and effective way of meeting certain land management goals. For instance, a small controlled fire can help restore the health of a local ecosystem or reduce the accumulation of brush, logs and other readily flammable fuels that could feed a wildland fire. According to Brown, the vast majority of prescribed burns go off without a hitch, but require careful planning. “Planners have to wait for weather and fuel conditions to fall into a set of prescribed thresholds. You don't want it to get out of control, but it needs to burn enough to meet the objectives.”
And then there's the smoke. “People are obviously very averse to smoke,” Brown says. “We're looking at a lot of research to validate where smoke goes and especially where it will come down. It's a complex physical problem and a societal one. Like fire, smoke is also a natural part of the western landscape.”
But complex problems are no problem, thanks to the program's high-powered 32-processor computer system from Silicon Graphics, Inc. The system will run predictive models showing fire weather conditions, fire behavior and smoke dispersion, and help create forecast maps of key factors such as precipitation, temperature and wind speed and direction.
All this requires a mind-boggling amount of computing power. “There are almost 40 billion calculations for each grid point on a model and something like 3.7 million grid points,” Brown says.
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This high-resolution, 4 km, forecast map showing wind speed (color shading) and direction (arrows) over most of Nevada is one of the products Brown's team creates for fire agencies. Note the directional features of wind due to terrain and larger scale meteorology conditions. Fire weather forecasters would use a map like this to assess future potential wind conditions either for managing a wildfire or planning for a prescribed burn. |
The system operates using meteorological data taken from points as close as 4-kilometer intervals, considered high resolution for this type of analysis. “We can zero in for more and more detail,” Brown says, “a capability that would certainly prove valuable to wildfire managers on major firefighting efforts.”
In the not too distant future, those same managers may prepare for the worst by stepping into a virtual reality fire, courtesy of DRI's new Immersive Visualization Laboratory. When the various stages of the visualization system are completed, probably sometime in 2007, the facility will offer a total immersion visualization experience.
“Imagine a room,” Brown says, “where every wall and the floor and ceiling will be a rear-projected screen.” Then, he says, imagine the potential applications. “As a fire manager in charge of the prescribed burn, or ‘burn boss,' as they are called ... you could light a virtual fire and watch it burn on your landscape. Then you could change a condition, make it windier or drier or wetter and see what happens. It will allow managers to look at a detailed, realistic scenario and outcome, and help them with training and making decisions.”
Brown says the facility may also prove a valuable tool for communities at the wildland-urban interface, where the potential for life and property loss can be highest. Simple measures like creating fuel breaks with lawns and driveways as well as removing leaf clutter and tree limbs can make a big difference in how homes fare in the face of fire, but motivating residents to make the effort before disaster strikes can be a challenge.
“We can use fire physics models that actually run a fire through an area and demonstrate to people how their community would be affected if they are proactive, or if they are not. If people don't quite believe you, they can see it for themselves. Virtual fire will be educational for everyone.”
In other words, they'll have what they need to make an informed decision. And our biggest decisions—like the safety and well being of our homes, our citizens and our environment—should be our best decisions.
–Jackie Allen
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Think of firefighting tools and you probably think of axes, hoses and shovels—but how about lightning climatologies, hydrologic indices and vegetation maps?
Those are just a few of the less familiar tools that managers wield against fire, and DRI graduate research assistant Crystal Kolden, who served two seasons as a firefighter in California's Eldorado National Forest, knows how important they can be.
That's why she traded her boots for books, pursuing a master's in geography at the University of Nevada , Reno and joined DRI's Program for Climate, Ecosystem and Fire Applications.
“I saw a need for folks like myself, who understood suppression and management from the ground level, to support and be involved with the research that helps managers along ... It's worked out really well as a partnership, since most of Tim's associates have a meteorological, or more academic, background and focus.”
Kolden sees the program as an important partner for fire managers, one that helps them piece together the complex information vital to their jobs. “There are links among fire weather, forest health, fuels and such. We help draw the connections between all these things for fire managers ... It's a great academic resource and support network for them.”
Much of Kolden's work focuses on the issues surrounding prescribed burns—when, where and how to use them safely and effectively. “It's a big decision for a manager,” she says. “Are we going to light that match today or not? We try to come up with tools to help them with that decision.”
As with any line of work—seamstress, carpenter or firefighter—quality tools are vital. “This program can do so much to refine and validate a fire manager's tools,” Kolden says, “making them simpler to use, and creating new and better ways to visualize information.”
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