Why we burn: Multiagency campaign collecting big data on prescribed fire

To address wildfire risks and make prescribed fires safer, USDA Forest Service researchers are working alongside experts from many organizations, including the Department of Defense and NASA. 

Photo Credit

Joe O'Brien, USDA Forest Service

A fire energy tower - for measuring the heat and energy released by the fire - is visible in the background. The image is from the 2022 campaign at Fort Stewart. 

In April 2025, approximately a hundred fire scientists and managers gathered in Georgia for the Fort Stewart Prescribed Fire Campaign.

The research burn campaign is designed to support prescribed fire science, while maintaining safe military training conditions by making prescribed fires more feasible through tools like QUIC-Fire. Prescribed fires are an extremely important tool for mitigating wildfire risk, especially when regularly repeated. 

During the campaign, the team burned over 2,500 acres in three separate prescribed fires. The fires were conducted in close cooperation with Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield personnel, who have a very active prescribed fire program and typically burn over 100,000 acres every year.

Researchers collected large quantities of data about key aspects of prescribed fire, such as vegetation structure and fuels, fine scale micrometeorological conditions, and patterns of fire energy release. 

Eventually, the data will be publicly available and will inform next-generation models of fuel, fire behavior, fire effects and smoke. 

The research instruments included remote sensing platforms on satellites, aircraft, and in-situ fire sensors for measuring the heat and energy released by the fire, as well as pre- and post-fire 3D fuels scans using terrestrial laser scanners.

Researchers and technicians from the Athens Prescribed Fire Science Lab of the Forest Service were involved. Joe O’Brien led the team that measured fire behavior on the ground which included Steve Flanagan and Matt Olsavsky. Louise Loudermilk led the team that measured fuels with Gregg Chapman, Christie Hawley, and Irenee Payne. Because of the dynamic nature of wildland fire campaigns and the short turnaround between burns, both teams combined talent and labor and worked together with experts from other organizations. Yong Liu and Marcus Williams led the smoke team and Dexter Strother served on the Integrated Research Management Team.

The Integrated Research Management Team formally embeds research into the operational structure that is usually used to conduct prescribed fires or manage other incidents. These interdisciplinary teams are essential because they bring top thinkers and operational experts together to coproduce prescribed fire planning tools.

One of the tools the campaign will inform and improve is QUIC-Fire. This advanced modeling tool is already being demonstrated in the field, and like the campaign, the work is extremely collaborative, guided by critical feedback between scientists and practitioners of prescribed fire. Scott Goodrick of the Southern Research Station is a project lead and is also leading a QUIC-Fire project with Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Prescribed fire maintains fire-adapted ecosystems and can reduce the risk of wildfire. People have worked with fire for millennia, as Indigenous Knowledge confirms, and prescribed fire practitioners aim to do so now in a safe and effective manner.

As O’Brien and others have commented: fire can destroy, and it also creates. Its power is visible on the landscape at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield, where longleaf pines tower above the grasses, pitcher plants, saw palmettos, and other plants in the ground layer. Without fire, this landscape would look totally different. Without fire, red-cockaded woodpeckers, frosted flatwoods salamanders, and other species would not have homes here, as they depend on the longleaf pine ecosystem, which itself depends on fire.

Funding was provided by the Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) and the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) and the NASA FireSense project. Through the Wildland Fire Science Initiative, SERDP previously funded prescribed fire research burn campaigns in 2022 and 2024 at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield and one in 2023 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. 

For more information, email Scott Goodrick at scott.l.goodrick@usda.gov.