Articles

The NOAA Fire Weather Testbed facilitated integration of the Forest Service’s WindNinja model into the National Weather Service's spot weather forecasting system. This allows forecasters the new capability to run and visualize WindNinja in operational viewers for automated spot weather forecasts.

Fire managers rely on fuel moisture and wildfire danger models to assess conditions for prescribed burning and prioritize resources during busy wildfire seasons. These models have historically focused on the moisture content of surface fuels, like sticks and logs, but have ignored the role of soil moisture and its effects on living fuels, such as shrubs and trees. As it turns out, soil moisture is a critical driver of fire spread.

The Wildfire Risk to Communities data viewer is the latest addition to the suite of tools developed to help communities understand, explore, and reduce wildfire risk. The new data viewer makes the entire suite of WRC data available to anyone, without the need for GIS software or managing large data files.

User feedback is key to future improvements of the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System. In 2023, partners from the University of Idaho interviewed 47 IFTDSS users to gain a better understanding of how users use the system, what they like, and what they’d like to change. This feedback will help the tool evolve to continue to meet the needs of the fuels management community.

Changing fire regimes combine with improvements in wildfire risk technology to impact the spatial pattern and magnitude of simulated wildfire transmission to communities.

FSim is a wildfire simulation system that models hundreds of millions of large fire events to produce national-scale maps of wildfire probability and intensity – which are critical components of risk.

Replacing traditional wood burning outdoor fire pits and fire rings with fire pits specifically designed to function as low-smoke could significantly reduce fine particulate matter and other air pollutants produced during recreational outdoor burning.

Trees are less able to survive fire when they are affected by severe drought, which may reduce the resilience of western forests.

The Fireshed Registry is a geospatial dashboard where land managers and decision makers can view and map data related to wildfire exposure, completed management actions, and past and predicted wildfires.

The Fire Effects Information System has moved and improved – now it is even easier to find information about individual species, ecosystems, and their relationships with fire.

GeoLCES provides a geospatial framework for evaluating wildland firefighter lookouts, communications, escape routes, and safety zones.

The Wildfire Risk to Carbon dashboard allows users to visualize and analyze risk to forest and rangeland carbon from wildfire and estimate annual smoke emissions.

Recent experiments show that even "fire-safe" cigarettes can start a wildfire.

WindNinja is an open-source high-resolution wind model developed for wildland fire. It is used on nearly every large fire incident in the United States. WindNinja was recently updated to Version 3.12.0 with several new features and bug fixes.

The Behave Fire Modeling System is one of the most used computer programs for modeling both wildfire and prescribed fire. Behave was recently reworked into a new version that is designed to be more intuitive and easier to use, while still offering the same functionality as previous versions.

Scientists showed that WindNinja, a modeling program currently used to predict wind patterns during wildfires, can also identify dangerous wind conditions near the ground that may affect smokejumpers’ ability to land safely.

We know that extreme weather and heavy fuels can lead to extreme fire behavior. Researchers at the USDA Forest Service Missoula Fire Sciences Lab are developing a new fire spread model to more accurately predict how far and fast fires can move – even under extreme conditions. The new model will provide better information to help fire managers make decisions when responding to fires. It will a...

The updated National Fire Danger Rating System uses new fuel moisture models, simpler surface fuel models, and has been shown to be just as good or better at predicting measures of fire danger, despite the more automated process.

On August 5, 1949, 13 smokejumpers lost their lives responding to a fire that at first glance appeared manageable. The tragedy shook the wildland fire community and sparked a nationwide research effort aimed at better understanding wildfire behavior and improving firefighter safety.

The Fire Weather Alert System is designed to automatically warn on-the-ground wildland firefighters of dangerous weather conditions approaching their area and provide easy access to fire-relevant weather information.