Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE)

The Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE) is a nationwide, multi-agency effort that is advancing fire and smoke science and modeling capabilities. Information from this effort will help  land managers in several ways:

• Increase the use of managed fire.
• Improve firefighting strategies.
• Enhance smoke forecasts.
• Better assess carbon stores and fire-climate interactions

FASMEE provides unparalleled opportunities to introduce new technology and the next generation of fire researchers in the largest coordinated fire research project to date.

This collaborative effort facilitates integration of data across the entire smoke management continuum from fuels and fire behavior to plume dynamics, smoke production, smoke transport/chemistry, and other fire effects. FASMEE is aimed at dramatically improving operational modeling systems in use today as well as the next generation of modeling systems and tools expected to become operationally useful in the next 5 to 10 years.

As managers face the challenges presented by ever-larger fires, a changing climate, and increasingly unusual fuel conditions and fire weather, existing fire and smoke modeling systems used in decision making need new data sources. Observational data on wildfire behavior and smoke are difficult to obtain, and existing modeling systems, while heavily relied upon, are necessarily oversimplified. Long-needed upgrades will become possible through FASMEE, a visionary experiment that is collecting critical measurements of fuels, fire behavior, smoke, and other effects, and allowing researchers to ground-truth underlying scientific models.

2023 Learning and Burning

2023 Learning and Burning (Trailer)

FASMEE Overview – 2019 Burn

Data Collection Campaigns

FASMEE data have been collected during campaigns in the U.S. West, Southwest, and Southeast. These campaigns involved large, planned, prescribed burns, which approach wildfires in intensity. As of 2022, the first round of campaigns is complete. Researchers plan on returning to these locations for possible burns in 2023 and 2024.

Western Wildfire Campaign

Data were collected from wildfires and large prescribed burns in Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and Washington from 2018 thru 2020. This included fuel measurement on the ground and pre- and postfire airborne lidar collections. These data were used to model over 60 wildland fires for source characterization in support of the National Science Foundation WE-CAN project and FIREX-AQ studies funded by the NOAA and NASA.

Southwest Campaign

The FASMEE team successfully completed collected data during two operational stand- replacement prescribed burns in a dense, mixed- conifer/aspen site in 2019 and 2020. The prescribed burns were conducted by the Richfield Ranger District on the Fishlake National Forest, Utah. More than 40 scientists participated collecting fuels, fire behavior, plume dynamics, and smoke data.

Southeast Campaign

In 2021, four prescribed burns were conducted at Fort Stewart, Georgia, in conjunction with several Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program projects.