“…Our research findings provide scientific justification for using soil moisture data from in situ monitoring networks in fire danger rating systems. Such soil moisture data are increasingly available and are not currently being used in the context of wildfire preparedness. ”
Above: The percent of maximum soil moisture available to plants in the top 16 inches in Oklahoma, September 11, 2016.
David M. Engle, along with other scientists at Oklahoma State University, are making a case that soil moisture should be used as one of the components in determining grassland fire danger ratings.
Station that measures soil water at several depths and transmits the data. This image and the one above are courtesy of the researchers.
To assess the herbaceous fuel dynamics in grasslands, they conducted 3 studies:
1) A study that used a database of large wildfires in Oklahoma to examine the relationship of fire occurrence and fire size with soil moisture;
2) An intensive field-based study to quantify and subsequently model herbaceous fuel load and moisture content in grassland patches that differed in time since fire and, therefore, proportion of live and dead herbaceous fuel load, and;
3) Modeling the influence of herbaceous fuel dynamics and weather conditions on fire behavior in tallgrass prairie.
Above: Residences in 13 western states with a high or very high wildfire risk. CoreLogic.
CoreLogic has put together a report that looks at the residential properties in 13 western states that are potentially exposed to wildfire risk. It is an evaluation of the total number of properties at various risk levels, along with the estimated costs of reconstruction of single-family residences.
Residences in 13 western states with a high or very high wildfire risk, by category. CoreLogic.
Smokey Jack O’Lantern by Crystal Fajt, October, 2014.
Would you like to have Smokey Bear looking at your trick or treaters from a Halloween Jack O’Lantern? Here’s how, thanks to the Virginia Department of Forestry:
In 1932 Robinson Jeffers published a book of poetry titled Thurso’s Landing and Other Poems that was set in the central coast region of California. One poem in particular was written about a vegetation fire — possibly the Matilija Fire that burned 220,000 acres that year which is the fifth largest recorded fire in the state.
The deer were bounding like blown leaves
Under the smoke in front the roaring wave of the brush-fire;
I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.
Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror
Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned
Down the back slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle
Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,
Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders
He had come from far off for the good hunting
With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless
Blue, and the hills merciless black,
The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.
I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,
The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than mercy.
I have to admit — my six-second attention span rarely allows me to concentrate on the content of a poem that is more than a few lines long, but a couple of phrases stood out; Beauty is not always lovely, and in describing an eagle, Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders.
Mr. Jeffers led a very interesting life, coining the word inhumanism, the belief that mankind is too self-centered and too indifferent to the “astonishing beauty of things.” He briefly studied forestry at the University of Washington, had a scandalous affair with a married woman that was reported in the LA Times, and published many highly acclaimed books. But after writing about his staunch opposition to the United States’ entering World War II critics turned against him.
Goal-oriented training can change the balance between reflective and reflexive processes.
Emergency responders have all been there — they rush to get to an incident, very quickly size it up, and take action. But award-winning research looks at incident managers that include a third step, actually formulating a plan of action. It has been argued that the development of explicit plans enables shared situational awareness and goals to support a common operating picture.
The research evaluated 48 incident commanders from 11 Fire and Rescue Services in the United Kingdom who had just received one-hour of training on incident management. They were divided into two groups, one with standard training and the other that included information about decision-making:
For Group Decision, slides were included that highlighted the use decision controls, which involved using a rapid mental check list of questions at key decision points: Why am I doing this (i.e., what are my goals)? What do I expect to happen (i.e., what are the anticipated consequences)? and Are the benefits worth the risks? When participants given goal-oriented training watched the footage, and were asked what actions they would take next, they were directed to answer with reference to the decision controls.
After the brief training the firefighters participated in immersive virtual reality (VR) simulations of a house fire, a traffic collision, and a “skip fire that spreads to an adjoining shop”.
The results showed that goal-oriented training affects the decision-making process in experienced incident commanders across a variety of simulated environments
ranging from immersive VR through to live burns. There is evidence that the training can change the balance between reflective and reflexive processes which could have the potential to increase the effectiveness of communication between members of firefighting crews and to improve
safety.
Above: A bison in Yellowstone National Park, May 25, 2014. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Two recent and ongoing studies at the two big “Y” parks are yielding results about fire behavior and the effects of naturally occurring fire. The excerpts below are both from Phys.org.
An unprecedented 40-year experiment in a 40,000-acre valley of Yosemite National Park strongly supports the idea that managing fire, rather than suppressing it, makes wilderness areas more resilient to fire, with the added benefit of increased water availability and resistance to drought.
After a three-year, on-the-ground assessment of the park’s Illilouette Creek basin, University of California, Berkeley researchers concluded that a strategy dating to 1973 of managing wildfires with minimal suppression and almost no preemptive, so-called prescribed burns has created a landscape more resistant to catastrophic fire, with more diverse vegetation and forest structure and increased water storage, mostly in the form of meadows in areas cleared by fires.
“When fire is not suppressed, you get all these benefits: increased stream flow, increased downstream water availability, increased soil moisture, which improves habitat for the plants within the watershed. And it increases the drought resistance of the remaining trees and also increases the fire resilience because you have created these natural firebreaks,” said Gabrielle Boisramé, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and first author of the study…
…”Largely up until this point, fire has not necessarily carried well through the ’88 fire scars,” Yellowstone fire ecologist Becky Smith said. “I mean, it definitely has before, but it usually takes very specific conditions, like high winds or a very specific fuel bed. But this year, we’re definitely seeing it burn much more readily in the ’88 fire scars.”
The park has called in a special federal team that studies fire behavior to find out why.
“We’re trying to use it as a good learning opportunity to try and really narrow our focus on how and when the ’88 fire scars will burn,” Smith said. The 1988 wildfires burned 36 percent of the park.
It’s the first time Yellowstone has used the special team’s services, she said.
The 13-member team is studying two fires burning in the 1988 fire scar. It has deployed special heat-resistant equipment with sensors, cameras and other instruments to measure things like temperature and wind where the fires are burning…
