Federal Partners Work to Advance Predictive Modeling of Wildfires

Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory announced they are partnering for a joint project to create advanced computer models to forecast how wildfires will behave in various contingencies.

Wildfire modeling helps emergency managers plan prescribed fires, also known as controlled burns, including where and when to implement them. Modeling can also help emergency managers better understand and predict where a wildfire will move and its intensity, which can help save lives and resources. Better understanding the behavior of wildfires is critical as the impacts of wildfires continue to grow year after year, as climate change and other human activity creates more favorable conditions for fires to ignite. Indeed, Brian Oliver, the wildland fire division chief in Boulder, Colorado declared in late March that “Fire season’s year-round now.”  

However, even as wildfires become more likely going forward, advanced modeling of their behavior could allow first responders to mitigate the intensity of these fires before they impact critical infrastructure and the communities they serve. Consequently, this new partnership between the two agencies “creates an unparalleled opportunity to meet fire managers’ needs at local- to continental scales in the priority areas of climate-fire impacts, natural hazards and risk reduction, and ecosystem response to fire,” said Dave Applegate, USGS associate director of natural hazards. Read more at USGS.