Wildland Fire Safety

The Forest Service plays a pivotal role in informing the public and responding effectively to wildfire emergencies to safeguard lives, property, and natural resources. Fire safety research combines basic and applied science, in collaboration with the user community, to provide knowledge and real-time predictive tools and applications for fuels, fire, and air quality management. This research advances our understanding of fire behavior, fire danger, fire emissions, and smoke dispersion, leading to improved firefighter and public safety.

Featured Research

• The Fire Behavior Assessment Team (FBAT) - The Fire Behavior Assessment Team measures pre-fire fuels (vegetation), active fire behavior (with sensors in the fire), and post-fire fuels conditions during wildfires and prescribed fires. This information supports management needs such as verifying or testing fire behavior modeling assumptions for fire management plans.
• The Hot-Dry-Windy Index (HDWI) real-time product suite  - The Hot-Dry-Windy Index (HDW) was designed to help users determine which days are more likely to have adverse atmospheric conditions that make it more difficult to manage a wildland fire. It combines weather data from the surface and low levels of the atmosphere into a first-look product.
• Predictive Smoke Models - Wildfire smoke poses significant threats to human health. Scientists are providing land and fire managers with sophisticated predictive tools and strategies to mitigate smoke risks.
• Embers / Firebrands that are generated from wildfires are the leading cause of ignitions of structures at the Wildland-Urban Interface and an an important part of fire spread that is not well represented in predictive tools and models. This research is helping fire managers  better understand fire behavior. See also: Ember Generation.