2009 Research Highlights
Managers rate fire tools, suggest increased reliability
Related to the multi-agency Fire Program Analysis (FPA), a scientist with the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center is interacting with fire managers across the eastern United States to assess the value of FPA products. The researcher has identified three reasons why fire behavior models may perform poorly in the East relative to the West: (1) fuels maps are highly inaccurate; (2) the fire season largely occurs before leaf out and there is no relevant canopy cover layer; (3) many fires in the east are regulated by the water table or shrub-herb leaf out, and existing fuel models lack the capability to switch fuel types based on phenology and climate variation. Future work will address these deficiencies and improve the reliability of the modeling tools.
Contact: Steve Norman, ecologist, (828) 259-0535, steve.norman@usda.gov
Partners: North Carolina Center for Geographic Information Systems
