Earth & Sky

Wildfire maps will aid in planning, firefighting

U.S. scientists are using Earth-orbiting satellites to create maps of vegetation, with the goal of managing wildfires.

The project is called LANDFIRE, and the maps should be useful for long-term planning by land managers and short-term fire fighting efforts. According to Kevin Ryan, program manager for LANDFIRE, the maps…

Kevin Ryan: …Allow us to predict how rapidly fires will spread across a landscape, the direction of fire spread, and how much energy the fire is predicted to release as it spreads across the landscape.

Ryan, who’s based at the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab, said the maps use 108 different pieces of information. He called them a “layer cake of data: 108 layers deep.”

Wildfires help clear away old debris and make way for new growth in forests and grasslands. No one knows whether there are more wildfires now – or whether modern fires are more intense – than hundreds of years ago.

Kevin Ryan: There are a lot more people moving out into wildland areas so there’s a lot more property value and a lot more infrastructure that is being threatened by fires when they do occur.

But, Ryan said, fuel build-up – plus drier conditions have combined to create more severe fires in recent years.

Our thanks today to NASA: explore, discover, understand.