Fire

Fire has historically played an important role in shaping many ecosystems. Many fire-adapted ecosystems have been altered by social and ecological factors including fire suppression, grazing, climate change, and residential development. Understanding the ecological role of fire is essential for balancing the benefits and risks of various fire management strategies. 

Fire size, severity and frequency are increasing in many areas, as are related fatalities and firefighting costs. In an era of rapid change and increasing complexity, fire managers and scientists demand cutting-edge research, tools, and applications.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Wildfire Crisis Strategy calls for treating up to an additional 20 million acres of National Forest System lands and up to an additional 30 million acres of other federal, state, Tribal and private lands. 

Read the Science Supporting the Wildfire Crisis Strategy & Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Fact Sheet to learn about how the Rocky Mountain Research Station supports this work.

Featured work

• The Fireshed Registry identifies where wildfires ignite, and where wildfires are likely to spread to communities and expose buildings. When combined with the Scenario Investment Planning Platform, land managers can use the Fireshed Registry to prioritize areas with the highest risk of infrastructure exposure to wildfire for landscape treatments. 
• Understanding Post-fire Tree Mortality: Resources & Research: This StoryMap compiles information about post-fire tree mortality, including basic information on how fires kills trees, how to predict post-fire tree mortality, a database of tree mortality records after fire, model accuracy, and decision support.
• Potential Operational Delineations (PODs): The PODs process is a cross-boundary, collaborative engagement that translates into operational strategies once fire is on the ground
• Wildfire Risk to Communities provides interactive maps, charts, and resources to help communities across the United States understand, explore, and reduce wildfire risk.

Fire Applications and Products

The Fire, Fuels and Smoke science program, sometimes referred to as the Missoula Fire Lab within the Rocky Mountain Research Station has developed dozens of fire support tools using the most sophisticated fire knowledge and state-of-the-art platforms. 

• WindNinja is a microscale diagnostic wind model, developed for and widely used in operational wildland fire applications both in the United States and abroad. WindNinja was developed to be used by emergency fire responders within their typical operational constraints of fast simulation times (seconds), minimal computing requirements (laptop computers), and low technical expertise.
• WildfireSAFE provides an intuitive platform to access fire weather, hazard and behavior information from the Wildland Fire Assessment System (WFAS) for specific incidents. It supports the greater interagency fire community in the planning, response, and recovery phases of wildfire management. Animated videos were developed to share WildfireSAFE with firefighters and people living in and close to the WUI.
• The Fire Weather Alert System is a mobile app designed to automatically warn on-the-ground wildland firefighters of dangerous weather conditions approaching their area and provide easy access to fire-relevant weather information. The Fire Weather Alert System monitors weather forecasts and measurements such as Remote Automatic Weather Stations, radar, and lightning, and alerts firefighters to conditions like high winds, low relative humidity, thunderstorms, and Red Flag Warnings, all based on custom weather thresholds set by the user.
• Next Generation Fire Severity Mapping is a tool designed to depict the probability of high-severity fire, if a fire were to occur, for several ecoregions in the contiguous western U.S. Statistical models were used to generate “wall-to-wall” maps for 13 of the 19 ecoregions. Managers can use this information to identify areas with a high probability of having a high-severity fire.