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Predicting Wildfires

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Predicting Wildfires MODELING FIREFIGHTER contemplates a Washington State blaze. © 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. Predicting Wildfires Fires are burning more acres than ever. Where will the next blazes ignite? Can we prevent them? Should we? By Patricia Andrews, Mark Finney and Mark Fischetti he number of catastrophic wildfires in the U.S. has been KEY CONCEPTS steadily rising. The nation has spent more than $1 billion ■ Fuels are building up in forests because annually to suppress such fires in eight of the past 10 years. for decades agencies that manage these T In 2005 a record 8.7 million acres burned, only to be succeeded by lands have attempted to put out almost 9.9 million acres in 2006. And this year is off to a furious start. all fires. Accumulation of deadwood and debris across large continuous tracts To a great extent, the increase in fires stems from a buildup of leads to extreme fires that are too expan- excess fuel, particularly deadwood and underbrush. Forests har- sive and hot to fight. bor more fuel than ever in large part because for decades, land ■ Computer models are being used to pre- management agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, have fol- dict how a current fire will burn and are lowed a policy of trying to quickly put out every fire that starts. getting better at forecasting which land Fires, however, can clear out debris, preventing material from ac- areas are most susceptible to wildfire in cumulating across wide areas and feeding extremely large, intense the weeks, months or years ahead. fires that become impossible to fight. Even in the absence of such ■ The models are helping land managers a policy, firefighters find themselves compelled to combat many better position fire crews and equipment blazes because people continue to build homes further into wild- so that they can jump on a blaze as soon as it starts, raising the chances of pro- lands, and those structures require protection. Exacerbating the tecting people, property and natural problem, spring snowmelts have been occurring earlier, extending resources. the number of weeks every year when forests are exposed and dan- ■ Other software is emerging that can gerously dry. gauge how future fires might be mitigat- Clearly, the fuel supply needs to be reduced by allowing some ed by thinning forests or allowing some naturally occurring fires to burn themselves out and by starting fires to burn. These models can help land other burns. Fire is also important to the health of ecosystems; managers and agencies craft new policies plant life has evolved with fire and depends on it. As wildfires that will lessen the chance for catastroph- ic fires and also restore fire as an integral skew to the extreme end of the size and intensity range, ecosys- part of natural ecosystems. tems that for millennia had depended on fire are being drastically —The Editors altered, leaving them vulnerable to full-scale devastation from © 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. ture content of dead grasses and twigs (which can change hourly), and much more. Figuring out how to control a fire’s spread involves even more variables, such as wind speed, ground slope, daily weather and the likely effects of firefighting tactics, among them dropping retardant from the air and bulldozing land to create barren fire- breaks that flames have difficulty crossing. Nevertheless, computer models capable of predicting the spread of a wildfire that has al- ready started are becoming sophisticated. They are helping land managers and fire command- ers make decisions that could save the lives of firefighters and area residents, as well as reduce the costs of battling the inevitable blazes. In 2006 some of the new modeling systems were used for the first time to influence where fire crews and equipment should be deployed. And this year they are coming into widespread use, already having helped fight early-season blazes in Florida, Georgia and California. Technically speaking, a model refers to a set of algorithms that describe a single physical trait of a fire, such as the spread rate of flames. Programmers combine these models to create a AIR TANKER drops 2,500 gallons diseases or insect infestation. Arizona’s “sky fire-modeling system that land managers or fire of retardant on a fire in islands”—small, high-altitude forests protrud- danger analysts run on a computer to produce Colorado. ing from the desert—are already being lost to forecasts and maps. In daily parlance these sys- this very sequence. And wonderful old lodge- tems end up being called models as well, and pole forests in Colorado have been killed by that is how we will use the term here. bark beetle infestations that fire usually would In 1976 fire behavior analysts working on the have limited. ground alongside wildfires began consulting ta- ) Finney Unfortunately, it is difficult to know how bles and graphs called nomograms to predict a and much fuel must be removed to reduce the chance fire’s intensity, along with the rate and direction for extreme fires and how best to effect that re- of its spread. These predictions were based on Andrews [THE AUTHORS] moval. When should fires be set purposely to the types of fuel in the area (and their moisture eliminate fuel? When should firefighters allow content), wind speed and slope steepness (a fire new fires to burn? To address such questions, advances up a slope much faster than on level policymakers, land managers and firefighting ground). The analysts drew the results as vec- organizations need tools to test possible actions. tors on a big topographic map for firefighters to COURTESYFORESTU.S.OF SERVICE ( ; ; In the past half a decade researchers have great- see. Although expert judgment and manual ) ly improved computer models that capture how methods of calculation will continue to be used top, this pagethistop, fires behave and provide firefighters with strate- in the field, computer software is surging. ( gies for deciding how to handle them. Fire ex- The FARSITE fire area simulator developed perts, climatologists and computer scientists are by one of us (Finney) relies on similar inputs but Patricia Andrews and Mark also devising large-scale models that can predict also calculates where a fire might spread and SpotfireImages Finney have developed several MILLAN which tracts of land are ripe for fire in the next how quickly. A fire behavior analyst enters a C of the leading computer models week, the next fire season and years ahead. blaze’s current position along with data on fuels, used throughout the U.S. to );MIKEM predict wildfires. Andrews is a terrain and weather forecasts into a laptop, and research physical scientist at Fighting a Fire in Progress FARSITE produces contoured graphics that de- the Fire Sciences Laboratory Modeling how a fire will burn through a forest pict the conflagration’s growth for the next one precedingpages in Missoula, Mont., run by the might seem to be an impossible task. A daunting to three days. This information helps fire man- U.S. Forest Service. Finney is a number of variables must be considered: types of agers decide which suppression tactics might be research forester at the lab. Mark Fischetti is a staff editor at deadwood, the limb structures of trees, terrain, safest and most effective. Scientific American. weather, moisture content of living leaves, mois- Large wildfires often burn for many more KARENWATTENMAKER ( 48 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN August 20 07 © 2007 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC. days, however. Deciding where to position they would be; many managers found the mod- crews and equipment requires longer-term pre- el extremely helpful, although some said it tend- diction. Another program, FSPro (for fire ed to predict that fires would spread farther spread probabilities), was developed by Finney than they actually did. for this task. He intended to run it on a trial ba- Because FSPro runs thousands of scenarios, sis for a few fires in 2006, but so many broke personal computers cannot handle the process- out during the season that fire managers ended ing required. During all of 2006 and the spring up consulting FSPro on more than 70 blazes. of 2007, the Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missou- The model calculates the probability of where la, Mont., overseen by the Research branch of a fire might spread by running thousands of the U.S. Forest Service, ran the model and sent FARSITE simulations, each with a different contoured maps to fire crew commanders in the weather sequence that is based on historic cli- field. But in May, FSPro went online, allowing matology for the area. Projections can be made authorized analysts to enter data directly on the for as far out as 30 days. Knowing whether a Web and to see the resulting maps there, too. fire is 20 or 80 percent likely to reach a commu- FSPro will improve as researchers finesse the nity influences how fire crews work and wheth- basic physics-level models. For example, experts er residents should be evacuated. In general, are only now creating reasonable models of FSPro predicted well where flames would spread, crown fires—fires that sweep through the cano- how quickly they would advance and how hot py of a forest instead of along the ground. Even HOW WILL THE BLAZE SPREAD? n July 23 and 24 of last year, lightning storms ignited multiple forest,” Bahro says—the kinds of information FSPro needed. “We just O wildfires across the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in northern had to get it all into Mark’s machine.” California. Fire crews sprang into action, but Joe Millar, the forest’s As Finney worked the software, fire crew commanders on the fire management officer, quickly realized that four or five of the flare- ground began calling in reports of how the fires were advancing.
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