OREGON—Following a 500-acre controlled burn in 2020 on Fishlake National Forest, Utah, the southwest data collection campaign of the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment is a wrap! The latest stage of this campaign concluded after monitoring the Richfield Ranger District’s Annabella Reservoir stand-replacement prescribed burn. It was the third such prescribed fire monitored by FASMEE, following projects at Manning Creek and Langdon Mountain in 2019.

Getting to Know Fire and Smoke

Forest fire temperatures often reach or exceed 2,000° F—one-fifth the temperature of the sun’s surface—and can produce large quantities of smoke. What is the impact of such high temperatures on the soil and future plant growth in our forests? How much smoke is generated, and what is the impact on nearby communities? Thanks to FASMEE, research is happening to answer such questions.

FASMEE is a large-scale interagency effort to collect a large set of data that will be used to evaluate and advance operational fire and smoke models in use today. This data set will improve our ability to identify how fuels, fire behavior, fire energy and meteorology interact to determine the dynamics of smoke plumes, the long-range transport of smoke and local fire effects, such as soil heating and vegetative response. Knowing more about how wildland fire operates and using this information to improve current operational models will help land managers better predict fire behavior, smoke impacts and the short- to long-term effects of fire.

Collecting and Crunching the Data

More than 25 scientists participated in collecting data on the Annabella Reservoir prescribed burn. Fuels and fuel consumption were characterized using ground sampling and terrestrial and airborne light-detection-and-ranging (LiDAR) imaging. High-temperature-sensing thermocouples placed into the ground were used to capture soil heating for investigating vegetation responses.

Meteorology and plume dynamics were characterized using radar and three ground-based LiDAR platforms. The team even affixed instruments on five drones to sample smoke. Researchers are now reducing and analyzing the data and drafting research papers.

“One of the things that really helped the Richfield Ranger District out is that we were able to support the firefighters by flying drones with infrared cameras to scout for hot spots. This eliminated the need for fire crews to grid the area, they were very appreciative of that,” said Roger Ottmar, a research forester with the Pacific Northwest Research Station.

Applying New Knowledge

Fire has a natural role in forest renewal. Yet, after decades of fire suppression, large areas of normally fire-adapted forests have become susceptible to uncharacteristic wildfire: fires that burn so hot or over such large areas that most or all the trees in the overstory are killed.

Fuel treatments that include thinning, prescribed fire and managed wildfire can help create fire-resilient forests, but measuring their effectiveness is inherently complex. Forest Service scientists are studying fuel treatment effectiveness using a variety of approaches. Their research provides land managers with information on the extent to which treatments change fire behavior.

“Land managers typically use prescribed fire to meet ecological objectives,” explained Rocky Mountain Research Station research ecologist Sharon Hood. “One of FASMEE’s big goals is to improve linkages between how we burn with the outcomes of the burn.”

What Comes Next

The Annabella Reservoir prescribed burn was the second of three large field campaigns throughout the U.S. to collect data. FASMEE will complete the third and final field campaign with four prescribed burns planned for Fort Stewart, Georgia, in 2022.  

This data collection effort will be combined with other fire projects funded by the Department of Defense Strategic Environmental Research Development Program. More information can be found at https://www.FASMEE.net.