Synthesis / Tech Report
Access the story map and biochar resources.
Biochar is a modern technology that returns carbon to the soil in the form of long-lasting charcoal. It’s made by baking biomass (such as tree wood, plants, manure, and other organic materials) without the oxygen that could cause it to burn completely to ash.
View summary and access full report.
Our model-informed decision framework illustrated that forest management (thinning and continued prescribed fire) was most effective and critical under extreme fire weather conditions. Using a model to inform on where high-severity fires were most likely to occur allowed for the strategic placement of management prescriptions, which reduced the amount of area requiring mechanical thinning and were just as effective as less strategic approaches in reducing wildfire severity.
Access report.
Spot fires caused by wind-blown burning embers are a significant mechanism of fire spread in the wildland and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI). Fire spread and structure ignition by embers can be characterized by three major processes or mechanisms: ember production, ember transport, and ember ignition of fuel. This study investigates ember production from selected wildland and structural fuels under a range of environmental conditions through full-scale, intermediate-scale, and small-scale laboratory experiments.
View the Progress Report.
In 2015, the Bureau of Land Management implemented a call to action with the release of the Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy (IRFMS) to improve the efficiency and efficacy of actions to address rangeland fire, to better prevent and suppress rangeland fires, and improve efforts to restore fire-impacted landscapes. The IRFMS specifically addresses the need to explore targeted livestock grazing as a strategic fine fuels reduction option. This report describes the progress made on these actions to date.
Read the report.
In December of 2017, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator requested the Department of Homeland Security DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) research new and emerging technology that could be applied to wildland fire incident response, given the loss of life that occurred in California during the fall of 2017 in Santa Rosa and Ventura.
In response to the request, DHS S&T—in collaboration with FEMA, the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), and other key stakeholder experts—determined wildland urban interface (WUI) incidents and life-saving functions as the optimal areas for DHS S&T to explore technology innovation. As a result, S&T formed an Integrated Project Team (IPT) and initiated the WUI Fire Operational Requirements and Technology Capability Analysis Project. Over the course of the project, the IPT identified areas of innovation in wildland fire incident relating to wildland fire preparedness and mitigation and enhanced wildland fire suppression practices, including resistant infrastructure planning, building materials, and building codes. To meet the Administrator’s request, however, the IPT focused its efforts on requirements for improving operational capabilities and incident response to save lives in WUI fires.
Read the review.
This review paper presents simulations and experiments of hypothetical prescribed burns with a suite of selected fire behavior and smoke models and identifies major issues for model improvement and the most critical observational needs. The results are used to understand the new and improved capability required for the next-generation SRF systems and to support the design of the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE) and other field campaigns. The next-generation SRF systems should have more coupling of fire, smoke and atmospheric processes. The development of the coupling capability requires comprehensive and spatially and temporally integrated measurements across the various disciplines to characterize flame and energy structure (e.g. individual cells, vertical heat profile and the height of well-mixing flaming gases), smoke structure (vertical distributions and multiple subplumes), ambient air processes (smoke eddy, entrainment and radiative effects of smoke aerosols) and fire emissions (for different fuel types and combustion conditions from flaming to residual smouldering), as well as night-time processes (smoke drainage and super-fog formation).
Read the report.
The purpose of this analysis was to evaluate the number of federal oil and gas leases issued and number of APD issued between 2015 and 2019 that occurred within BLM-designated sage-grouse habitat (General and Priority Habitats). More specifically, our objective was to evaluate the differences in the number and acreage of federal oil and gas leases and number of APDs assigned inside and outside of BLM-designated sage-grouse habitat from October 1, 2015 to March 15, 2019.
View report.
This study comprehensively assessed the health risks posed by smoke exposure, and constructed new tools to estimate and forecast smoke concentration levels and associated health effects. We accomplished these goals with four specific aims. In Aim 1, we compared the chemical composition of fine PM emanating from fire smoke with typical urban PM in the US. In Aim 2, we conducted a systematic review and meta analysis of the risk estimates to evaluate the risks of smoke exposure for all relevant health outcomes. In Aim 4 we combined model-based predicted smoke exposure with health and economic assessment tools to provide real-time forecasts of health risk over space and time. In this report, we describe the results of this work and their impact on the field.
This report provides a framework for assessing cross-boundary wildfire exposure and a case study application in the western US. The case study provides detailed mapping and tabular decision support materials for prioritizing fuel management investments aimed at reducing wildfire exposure to communities located proximal to national forests. We used national FSim simulation outputs to (1) estimate cross-boundary wildfire among major land types (Federal, State, private); (2) quantify structure exposure to all western communities; (3) map sources of community wildfire exposure (firesheds); (4) characterize firesheds in terms of management opportunity and fuels; and (5) prioritize communities based on integration of exposure and fireshed characteristics.
View report.
Wildland firefighters in the United States are exposed to a variety of hazards while performing their jobs in America’s wildlands. Although the threats posed by vehicle accidents, aircraft mishaps, and heart attacks claim the most lives, situations where firefighters are caught in a life-threatening, fire behavior-related event (i.e. an entrapment) constitute a considerable danger because each instance can affect many individuals. In an attempt to identify the scope of understanding of the causes of firefighter entrapments a review of the pertinent literature and a compilation and synthesis of existing data were undertaken.