modeling

Climate change increases fire-favorable weather in forests, but fire trends are also affected by multiple other controlling factors that are difficult to untangle. We use machine learning to systematically group forest ecoregions into 12 global forest pyromes, with each showing distinct sensitivities to climatic, human, and vegetation controls.

The Yurok Tribe, along with other tribal communities in northwest California, non-profit organizations, universities, and governmental agencies are working to restore forests and woodlands to be more resilient to wildfires, drought, pests and diseases.

Lightning is responsible for the most area annually burned by wildfires in the extratropical region of the Northern Hemisphere. Hence, predicting the occurrence of wildfires requires reliable forecasting of the chance of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes during storms.

Projected increases in wildfire frequency, size, and severity may further stress already scarce firefighting resources in the western United States that are in high demand. Machine learning is a promising field with the ability to model firefighting resource usage without compromising dataset size or complexity.

As the frequency and intensity of power line-induced wildfires increase due to climate-, human- , and infrastructure-related risk drivers, maintaining power system resilience and reducing environmental impacts become increasingly crucial.

Background

Situational awareness is an essential component of wildland firefighter safety. In the US, crew lookouts provide situational awareness by proxy from ground-level locations with visibility of both fire and crew members.

Aims

Urban smoke exposure events from large wildfires have become increasingly common in California and throughout the western United States. The ability to study the impacts of high smoke aerosol exposures from these events on the public is limited by the availability of high-quality, spatially resolved estimates of aerosol concentrations.

The US faces multiple challenges in facilitating the safe, effective, and proactive use of fire as a landscape management tool. This intentional fire use exposes deeply ingrained communication challenges and distinct but overlapping strategies of prescribed fire, cultural burning, and managed wildfire.

Background

Climate projections signal longer fire seasons and an increase in the number of dangerous fire weather days for much of the world including Australia.

Aims