Research Database
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Geolces: Geospatial Support for Evaluating Wildland Firefighter Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes, and Safety Zones
Year: 2025
Wildland firefighters play a critical role in managing the complex relationship between humans and fire. To reduce the inherent risks that come with this role, firefighters use safety protocols such as lookouts, communications, escape routes, and safety zones (LCES). Currently, LCES implementation is conducted on the ground with limited support from geospatial information, despite the protocol’s inherently spatial nature. This study introduces GeoLCES: an analytical framework designed to enhance LCES implementation using remote sensing and geospatial modeling. GeoLCES comprises three…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Projections of Lightning-Ignited Wildfire Risk in the Western United States
Year: 2025
Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning is a major source of summer wildfire ignition in the western United States (WUS). However, future projections of lightning are uncertain since lightning is not directly simulated by most global climate models. To address this issue, we use convolutional neural network (CNN)-based parameterizations of daily June-September CG lightning. CNN parameterizations of daily CG lightning occurrence at each grid cell use fields of three thermodynamic variables—ratio of surface Moist Static Energy (MSE) to 500 hPa saturation MSE, 700–500 hPa lapse rate, and 500…
Publication Type: Journal Article