ASU Expert Available to Talk About Wildfires
Arizona State University (ASU)
The U-led study is the first attempt to map escape routes for wildland fire fighters from an aerial perspective. The researchers used LiDAR technology to analyze the terrain slope, ground surface roughness and vegetation density of a fire-prone region in central Utah, and assessed how each landscape condition impeded a person’s ability to travel.
Hurricanes Irma and Harvey have left many outside their paths thinking about how they might prepare for a weather emergency.
NMATE brought together technologists, operators, and decision makers from around the country to determine to what extent existing mutual aid technology systems are able to share and incorporate each other’s resource and situational awareness information.
The USDA Forest Service in the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area (BWCWA) will continue to use controlled burns without worrying about fish health in associated watersheds.
Wildfires are major polluters. Their plumes are three times as dense with aerosol-forming fine particles as previously believed. For the first time, researchers have flown an orchestra of modern instruments through brutishly turbulent wildfire plumes to measure emissions in real time. They have also exposed other never before measured toxins.
Researchers have found that carbon particles released into the air from burning trees and other organic matter are much more likely than previously thought to travel to the upper levels of the atmosphere, where they can interfere with rays from the sun – sometimes cooling the air and at other times warming it.
Forest fires can be frightening, destructive events. The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) March 15 Soils Matter blog post explains the effects of forest fires on soil ecosystems—and how they bounce back.
Several organizations and private landowners are working on restoration techniques to improve wildlife habitat and forage for livestock in Grant County, New Mexico. Projects include stock tank rehabilitation, as well as riparian, spring and wetland restoration.
Effective warnings are a growing need as expanding global populations confront a wide range of hazards, such as a hurricane, wildfire, toxic chemical spill or any other environmental hazard threatens safety.
The long-lasting effects of El Niño are projected to cause an intense fire season in the Amazon, according to the 2016 seasonal forecast from scientists at NASA and the University of California, Irvine.
The peat bogs of the world, once waterlogged repositories of dead moss, are being converted into fuel-packed fire hazards that can burn for months and generate deadly smoke, warns a McMaster researcher who documents the threat – and a possible solution ¬– in a paper published today in the journal Nature Scientific reports.
'Fire adaptive communities' live compatibly with wildfire -- in some cases for centuries or millennia; magnitude of the wildfire challenges we face on a warming planet will demand greater collaboration and integration.
At least 50 percent of the tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills is burned every three to four years or less frequently and is susceptible to becoming shrubland if fire frequencies are not increased.
A new analysis of global data related to wildfire, published by the Royal Society, reveals major misconceptions about wildfire and its social and economic impacts.
Climate change is melting glaciers, reducing sea-ice cover and increasing wildlife activity - with some of the most dramatic impacts occurring in the northern high latitudes.
US Northeast's mixed forests unsustainable after 2050 while Cascade Mountains may require subtropical forest species.
A changing climate is altering the ability of Rocky Mountain forests to recover from wildfire, according to a new study published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography. When warm, dry conditions lead to drought in the years following fires, it impedes the growth and establishment of vulnerable new post-fire seedlings. The study also shows that forest recovery has been negatively affected by increased distances between burned areas and the sources of seeds that typically replace trees lost to fire.
“If you live in flammable countryside, you’ve got to work with fire. You can’t make it go away,” according to professor Mark Cochrane, a wildfire expert and senior scientist at the Geospatial Sciences Center of Excellence. That means moving from the notion that fires are unnatural and toward a managed approach that involves reintegrating fire as a vital landscape process and building communities that are resilient to fire.
UCR study shows biomass grown in areas of poor air quality releases more pollutants when burned than biomass grown in clean air.
Olin College professor working on proof of concept system to deploy drones into a wildfire and send back information in real time, potentially saving lives and livelihoods in the process.
UMD-led study indicates “biomass burning” may play larger role in climate change than previously realized.
NAU researcher leads project to measure effects of severe boreal wildfires and the loss of permafrost on ecosystems. The NASA-funded research is part of the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment.
A team of international researchers, including James Beasley, assistant professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Georgia Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Warnell School Forestry and Natural Resources, has discovered abundant populations of wildlife at Chernobyl, the site of the 1986 nuclear accident.
The fall 2015 issue of Changing Business is now available online and in print. The cover story, “Trial by Fire,” examines a study in which workers in various fields can benefit from the lessons that wildfire fighting offers in performing well under unpredictable circumstances. The topic is of particular timeliness as states in the Western U.S. continue to battle spreading wildfires.
An article published in Science this week, suggests catastrophic wildfire danger could be reduced by increasing use of planning burning in land management plans.
Wildfires have ravaged both populated and unpopulated regions of Southern California at an increasing rate over the past few decades, and scientists from three University of California campuses and partner institutions are predicting that by midcentury, as a consequence of climate change causing hotter and drier summers, a lot more will go up in flames.
Researchers from the University of California, Irvine and NASA have uncovered a remarkably strong link between high wildfire risk in the Amazon basin and the devastating hurricanes that ravage North Atlantic shorelines. The climate scientists’ findings appear in the journal Geophysical Research Letters near the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s calamitous August 2005 landfall at New Orleans.
Other topics include editing genes, cellular switchboards, treating menopause and more...
As continued drought and unusually high temperatures raise alarm over the severity of this year’s wildfire season in western states, a Johns Hopkins University researcher’s study of wildland firefighting has uncovered lessons in performing under uncertainty that should benefit workers in a variety of contexts.
Over a 35-year period, the length of forest fire seasons worldwide increased by 18.7 percent due to more rain-free days and hotter temperatures, according to South Dakota State University professor Mark Cochrane, a senior scientist at the Geospatial Sciences Center of Excellence. The wildfire expert is part of a team of researchers led by W. Matt Jolly of the U.S. Forest Service Fire Science Laboratory that examined weather data from 1979 through 2013 to determine how a changing climate impacts forest ecosystems.
Deciding how often and when to use prescribed fire can be tricky, especially when managing for rare butterflies, University of Florida scientists say. That realization stems from a UF Institute of Food and Agricultural study in which researchers experimented with pupae -- insects in their immature form between larvae and adults -- of butterflies known to frequent fire-prone habitats of Florida.
A century spent treating wildfires as emergencies to be stamped out may have cost Central Wisconsin a natural setting that was common and thriving before the state was settled.
Land managers use prescribed burns to help prevent wildfires and protect the ecosystem. They prefer to burn every few years, but costs, liability and proximity to development prevent them from performing the prescriptive burns.
Scientists find that on the front range of the Colorado Rockies the highest fire risk factors are from privately owned lands and threaten other privately held land and property.