The most destructive and deadly wildfires in US history were also fast. Using satellite data, we analyzed the daily growth rates of more than 60,000 fires from 2001 to 2020 across the contiguous US. Nearly half of the ecoregions experienced destructive fast fires that grew more than 1620 hectares in 1 day.
Managing fuels is a key strategy for mitigating the negative impacts of wildfires on people and the environment. The use of satellite-based Earth observation data has become an important tool for managers to optimize fuel treatment planning at regional scales.
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
Introduction: Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency of extreme single-day fire spread events, with major ecological and social implications.
The 2023 Canadian forest fires have been extreme in scale and intensity with more than seven times the average annual area burned compared to the previous four decades. Here, we quantify the carbon emissions from these fires from May to September 2023 on the basis of inverse modelling of satellite carbon monoxide observations.
Background
The expanding use of Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS) technology in disaster response shows its immense potential to enhance emergency management. However, there is limited documentation on the challenges and data management procedures related to UAS operation.
Aims
The number of large, high-severity wildfires has been increasing across the western United States over the last several decades. It is not fully understood how changes in the frequency of large, severe wildfires may impact the resilience of conifer forests, due to alterations in regeneration success or failure.
Prescribed burning is a key management strategy within fire-adapted systems, and improved monitoring approaches are needed to evaluate its effectiveness in achieving social-ecological outcomes. Remote sensing provides opportunities to analyse the impacts of prescribed burning, yet a comprehensive understanding of the applications of remote sensing for prescribed burn research is lacking.
Anthropogenic climate change is altering the state of worldwide fire regimes, including by increasing the number of days per year when vegetation is dry enough to burn. Indices representing the percent moisture content of dead fine fuels as derived from meteorological data have been used to assess geographic patterns and temporal trends in vegetation flammability.