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Now available in PDF format: Abstract Book [7.4 Mb] (posted 10 November 2005)

Abstracts for Posters

Ecosystems (P-EC)

Sub-Theme 2: Wildfire

P-EC2.1

Addressing the Impact of Climate Change on Wildland Fires

Margaret R. McCalla, NOAA/OFCM, Silver Spring, MD, margaret.r.mccalla@noaa.gov

Mary M. Cairns, NOAA/OFCM, Silver Spring, MD

Mark J. Welshinger, NOAA/OFCM, Silver Spring, MD

In 2003, wildland fires in Southern California claimed 22 lives, destroyed 3,600 homes, burned nearly 740,000 acres of land, and caused more than $2 billion in property damage. As our Nation's population continues to grow, homes and other development press against the boundaries of public and private wildlands and rural areas. This interface between communities and wildlands and rural areas, called the wildland-urban interface, is where wildland fire can have its potentially greatest impact (e.g., loss of life and property).

Climate can play a significant role in conditions leading to and sustaining wildland fires. For example, climatic events, such as El Niño and prolonged heat waves, can lead to fire-prone areas where wildland fires are easily sustained because of the abundance of dry fuels. These climate-induced wildland fires can impact ecosystem health as well by destroying the environment of animals and endangered species (both plant and animal) and eliminating source areas of rich carbon dioxide needed for the balance of our atmosphere. Wildland fires also can directly impact the quality of our water supplies. Sediments from burned areas can be washed down into rivers adversely impacting a community's primary source of water. Finally, wildland fires, a major contributor of toxic air pollutants and particulate matter, have potentially detrimental health effects because they can penetrate deep into the human lungs and may cause a whole range of health problems.

Climate information can be more fully exploited in planning and executing wildland fire policy, processes, and procedures. One example of using climate information deals with the decisions for prepositioning equipment and personnel in advance of the fire season. The Climate Ecosystem and Fire Application Program at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, along with the National Predictive Services Group, the University of Arizona, and NOAA's Office of Global Programs conduct yearly workshops for the purpose of creating a "one voice" seasonal fire potential outlook. The outlooks have begun to provide fire managers with the tools they need for providing quick response to wildland fires, but more can be done.

The Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorological Services and Supporting Research (OFCM), an interdepartmental office with the mission to ensure the effective use of federal meteorological resources, will lead an interdisciplinary effort to conduct a comprehensive national wildland fire weather and climate needs assessment. This poster highlights the impacts of climate change on wildland fires and provides a synopsis of the plans for the national assessment.

P-EC2.2

Keepers of the Flame: The Role and Use of Climate in National and Regional Fire Policy

Timothy Brown, Desert Research Institute/Climate, Ecosystem and Fire Applications, tim.brown@dri.edu

Roger Pulwarty (NOAA-CIRES Climate Diagnostics Center

Since 1910, the U.S. Forest Service has developed and transformed policy for wildland fire suppression and management of federal lands utilizing prescribed fire and fire use. The fire management issues of today have evolved from 100 years of influence from three shaping factors—fire management practices, land use activities, and climate. All three have been on parallel but related paths. Some specific fire events have initiated or changed policy and hence management practices. Expectations have evolved from forests once being primarily an agricultural economic benefit, to now largely one of aesthetics and recreation, in the process creating the "wildland-urban interface". New management strategies have evolved in attempts to address not only tradeoffs between social and biological benefits but competing ecological values. Wet and dry climate periods have changed fuel characteristics, but are also related to both management practices (e.g., response strategies during drought) and the West's dramatic population growth.

In this presentation we argue that the benefits of climate information can be realized in both operational and constitutive or policy formulation
settings. The role and use of fire has evolved into one of recognition of the value of fire in ecosystem processes and not simply one of "fire as hazard." We review the evolution of national and regional fire policy and identify the potential and practical role for climate information in improving the outcomes identified within these strategies. More precisely we document (1) Policy changes: What was learned between 1994-2000 about prevention, suppression and the role of climate (and do the budgets reflect these lessons?); (2) Climate-sensitive factors which drive up firefighting (suppression and mitigation) costs; (3) Federal/state policies and programs that might experience increased fire risks and severity if climate is not taken into account within present fire preparedness plans; (4) Reforms that have been proposed. We show how consideration of climate variability and change may necessitate a paradigm shift in land management or at least in the assumptions inherent in management plans. Lessons are drawn from recent major fires and fire hotspots in the western United States.

We show that a proactive risk assessment approach, which incorporates cross-scale climatic information including forecasts, can improve policy
formulation and implementation in several areas. These include processes for identifying and developing: 1) Methodologies for measuring, evaluating and reporting fire management efficiency. 2) Alternatives at the national, regional, and local needs (e.g. a single federal fire organization, contracts). 3) Long-range interagency wildland fire management objectives based on values to be protected. 4) Input into interagency preparedness planning based on established wildland fire objectives to facilitate adaptive management.

P-EC2.3

Using Fire and Climate History for Assessing Current and Future Fire Hazards

Thomas Swetnam, University of Arizona, tswetnam@ltrr.arizona.edu

Michael Crimmins, University of Arizona

Barbara Morehouse, University of Arizona

Many forest and woodland ecosystems in western North America have undergone extreme changes during the past century, leading to increased hazard of high severity fires. In addition to forest structure and fuel changes, increased numbers of people living in these environments, and extreme droughts in recent years have led to extraordinary fire events, burning the largest areas in more than a century, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses, and damaging watersheds and habitats. Better management of forests and fire problems in the future, especially under changing climate conditions, will require the use of spatial/temporal analytical tools and datasets to map the current and anticipated fire hazards. We have developed a prototype tool for such analyses called "Wildfire Alternatives" (WALTER, http://walter.arizona.edu/). This presentation will focus on the use of
spatial/temporal fire and climate histories in the western United States for assessing climate-related changes in fire hazard, and the WALTER analytical tool as an example of decision support for managers.

[Poster PDF]

P-EC2.4

Using Satellite-Based Fire Products to Enhance the National Emissions Inventory

Amber Soja, National Research Council, NASA Langley Research Center, 21 Langley Boulevard, Mail Stop 420, Hampton, VA 23681-2199, a.j.soja@larc.nasa.gov

Jay Al-Saadi, EPA, NASA Langley Research Center, MS 401B, Hampton, VA 23681-2199

Brad Pierce, EPA, NASA Langley Research Center, MS 401B, Hampton, VA 23681-2199

James Szykman, EPA, NASA Langley Research Center, MS 401B, Hampton, VA 23681-2199

David J. Williams, USEPA, Office of Research and Development, Environmental Sciences Division, M/S: E243-05, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711

Tom Pierce, USEPA, Office of Research and Development, Environmental Sciences Division, M/S: E243-05, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711

Tom Pace, USEPA, Office of Research and Development, Environmental Sciences Division, M/S: E243-05, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711

Joe Kordzi, USEPA, Office of Research and Development, Environmental Sciences Division, M/S: E243-05, Research Triangle Park, NC 27711

Fire is a natural process that is directly influenced by weather and climate and in turn feeds back to the climate system by releasing stored carbon, emitting a host of atmospheric gases and aerosols, altering rainfall patterns and changing landscape-scale albedo (relative reflectivity). Although
biomass burning is a major contributor of particulate matter and other pollutants to the atmosphere, it is one of the most poorly documented of all source emissions in the United States. Biomass burning can be a significant contributor to a regions inability to achieve the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for PM 2.5 and ozone. Currently, the United States does not have a standard methodology to track fire occurrence or area burned, which are essential components to estimating fire emissions. One problem is the ownership and management of the land belongs to multiple
organizations and private individuals, so there is not one organization that is responsible for thoroughly monitoring fire. Satellite imagery provides the opportunity to remotely sense fire across boundaries.

In this talk, we will highlight the ability of satellite-based fire products to detect active fire, and we will describe how this information will assist the existing Environmental Protection Agency and Regional Planning Organization Decision Support Structure. In an effort to enhance existing area burned databases and emissions estimates, two satellite-based fire products are compared temporally and spatially to ground-based data from Florida. The satellite data are coincident with 14% of the reported ground fires, and 25% of the satellite data are coincident with the ground data. When considering the spatial resolution of the instruments, a coincidence of 54% exists between the satellite and ground-based data. Additionally, we
identified two regions where fires have burned that are detected by the satellites, but these fire events are not recorded in the ground data. We suggest that satellite data can be used to augment the existing ground-based fire dataset to enhance emissions estimates, thus enhancing the National Emissions Inventory and the ability of the Regional Planning Organizations and the Environmental Protection Agency to attain their goals.

[Poster PDF]

P-EC2.5

The MODIS Rapid Response Project:
A New Suite of Remote Sensing Products in Support of Decision Making

Jacques Descloitres, Science Systems and Applications, Inc., jack@ltpmail.gsfc.nasa.gov

Jeff Schmaltz, Science Systems and Applications, Inc.

Jackie Kendall, Science Systems and Applications, Inc.

Louis Giglio, Science Systems and Applications, Inc.

Chris Justice, Department of Geography, University of Maryland

Holli Riebeek, Science Systems and Applications, Inc.

The Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on board NASA's Terra and Aqua polar-orbiting satellites offers an unprecedented combination of daily spatial coverage, spatial resolution, and spectral characteristics. These instrument capabilities make MODIS ideal to provide observations in support of decision making for a variety of rapid events: active fires, floods, smoke transport, dust storms, severe storms, iceberg calving, and volcanic eruptions. A new processing system was built in 2001 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to provide a rapid response to those events, with initial emphasis on active fire detection and 250m-resolution imagery. MODIS data for most of the Earth's land surface is now processed within a few hours of data acquisition by the MODIS Rapid Response System and delivered to several decision-making systems.

A collaboration between NASA, the University of Maryland and the U.S.D.A. Forest Service was developed to provide fire information derived from MODIS to federal fire managers. Active fire locations in the conterminous United States are automatically produced by the MODIS Rapid Response System and communicated to the U.S. Forest Service within a few minutes of production to generate regional fire maps over the United States, updated four times daily and distributed to the fire managers to help them allocate firefighting resources. Active fire locations are also distributed in near-real-time to the Global Observation of Forest Cover/Global Observation of Landcover Dynamics (GOFC/GOLD) user community by the University of Maryland through the Web Fire Mapper, a web interface integrating MODIS active fire locations and Geographic Information System (GIS) datasets.

The initial suite of MODIS fire products has now been augmented with more rapid products, such as Vegetations Index, in response to users requests. New applications were developed with applications users in need for specific products, data formats, or delivery mechanisms. In particular, the MODIS Rapid Response System has the capability to accommodate specific requirements of existing decision support systems.

For example, a partnership with the U.S.D.A. Foreign Agricultural Service was initiated to generate custom near-real-time MODIS data to help improve the accuracy and timeliness of the crop yield predictions worldwide, which are needed to make decisions affecting U.S. agriculture, trade policy, and food aid. New system capabilities and services such as spatial subset subscription or event-triggered rapid alert were also developed. Recent accomplishments of the MODIS Rapid Response System are shown. Examples of products generated by the system and existing applications are presented.

[Poster PDF]

P-EC2.6

Statistical Modeling of Western Wildfire Season Severity for Decision Support

Anthony Westerling, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), awesterling@ucsd.edu

Tim Barnett, SIO

Daniel Cayan, SIO, USGS

Michael Dettinger, USGS

Alexander Gershunov, SIO

Hugo Hidalgo, SIO

The incidence of large wildfires is strongly influenced by climate variability via its effects on the availability of water for the growth and wetting of the vegetation that serves as fuel. Its strong links to climate variability and hydrology and its large economic impact make western U.S. wildfire a natural application for climate information services. At the California Applications Program, part of the NOAA RISA program, we provide wildfire research, modeling and forecast development to federal and state land management agencies. In this talk we will summarize research, products and stakeholder interactions for three applications of climate information to support fire and land management.

Seasonal wildfire area burned forecasts for the National Interagency Coordination Center's Predictive Services (NICC): The NICC disseminates climate and fire forecasts to fire weather and climate specialists who support fire management operations by state and federal land managers, and coordinates fire suppression resources locally, regionally, and nationally. We developed seasonal area burned forecasts that are prepared in January, February and April to support preparation of NICC seasonal fire outlooks.

Annual wildfire area burned and suppression costs forecasts for USDA Forest Service budgeting: USDA Forest Service budget managers customarily use the average of 10 preceding years to forecast fire activity and related suppression expenditures. Since wildfire activity is highly variable on interannual and decadal time scales, the Forest Service regularly exceeds its suppression budget, causing considerable disruption to other activities funded by the Service. At their request, we have assisted in the production of climate-based suppression cost forecasts for the Forest Service in March of the last three years. Currently, we are working with them to assess experimental long lead forecasts for use in allocating resources within the Forest Service budget at the start of their fiscal year in October.

Climate change impact assessment for wildfire for the State of California: At the request of the State of California, we are modeling wildfire activity for a range of emissions scenarios and global climate models. We will provide a preliminary climate change impact assessment for the California state legislature in January 2006, describing the incidence of large fires, area burned, and property losses. This work is supported by the California Energy Commission.

Wildfire management is a key component of ecosystem management in the western United States with significant potential to benefit from the integration of climate information into decision making.