The 2016 Storm Hill Fire burning near Mitchell Lake in the Black Hills. Photo by Incident Commander Rob Lehmann. Thanks to Great Plains Fire Information.
RAPID CITY, SD (June 29, 2017) – State Fire Meteorologist, Darren Clabo, Ph.D., at the
South Dakota School of Mines & Technology is helping create the Fire Risk Estimation tool
(FiRE). The tool gives land managers and firefighting officials a more detailed
look at fire potential across the Missouri River basin.
Smokey Bear signs that indicate overall fire danger are
common along roadways in the western United States. The FiRE tool uses
satellite and metrological data to create a much more detailed understanding of
fire danger. The tool can give firefighters a critical edge. Fire managers say
the “initial attack” phase during the first few hours of any of any wildfire is
the most important time to gain control. When officials know the areas where
fire danger is increasing ahead of time they can position resources and better prepare
to quickly respond to any small fires before they grow into large
incidences.
“We can narrow this onto a 10-kiliometer grid scale, says
Clabo. Previous tools only assessed fire danger on a wider scale, such as
across national forest districts or across a county. “If the western two thirds
of Pennington County is wet because they’ve gotten a series of thunderstorms, but
some of the eastern areas are dry, we will know where a fire is more likely to
start and spread.” Clabo adds.
Clabo says the FiRE tool combines satellite data and
meteorological data for an output not available in current fire danger assessments.
The tool analyzes drought conditions, high resolution fuel conditions and precipitation
conditions to produce a fire danger assessment map that land managers and
firefighters can monitor daily.
“One of the current problems across the Great Plains is we
don’t have very many weather stations. So, those estimated conditions can be
inaccurate, and we might not know where the most critical fire weather
conditions exist,” says Clabo.
The FiRE tool is being developed thanks to funding from the NOAA
National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and NASA DEVELOP with collaboration from
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Experts from these organizations are
contributing to this research alongside Clabo at SD Mines. The FiRE tool is set to be ready for use by
fire managers in the late summer or fall of 2017.