Abstract
The Cooney Ridge Fire Experiment conducted by fire scientists in 2003 was a burnout operation supported by a fire suppression crew on the active Cooney Ridge wildfire incident. The fire experiment included measurements of pre-fire fuels, active fire behavior, and immediate post-fire effects. Heat flux measurements collected at multiple scales with multiple ground and remote sensors illustrate the spatial and temporal complexity of the fire progression in relation to fuels and fire effects. We demonstrate how calculating cumulative heat release can provide a physically based estimate of fuel consumption that is indicative of fire effects. A map of cumulative heat release complements estimates of ground cover constituents derived from post-fire hyperspectral imagery for mapping immediate post-fire ground cover measures of litter and mineral soil. We also present one-year and 10-year post-fire measurements of overstory, understory, and surface conditions in a longer-term assessment of site recovery. At the time, the Cooney Ridge Fire Experiment exposed several limitations of current state-of-science fire measurement methods, many of which persist in wildfire and prescribed fire studies to this day. This Case Report documents an important milestone in relating multiple spatiotemporal measurements of pre-fire, active fire, and post-fire phenomena both on the ground and remotely.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 10 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-32 |
| Number of pages | 32 |
| Journal | Fire |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2018 |
Funding
Acknowledgments: This research was funded by two Joint Fire Science Program awards to the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station: “Demonstration and integration of systems for fire remote sensing, ground-based fire measurement, and fire modeling” (JFSP-03-S-01) to measure fuels and active fire and “Assessing the causes, consequences and spatial variability of burn severity: A rapid response proposal” (JFSP 03-2-1-02) to measure fire effects. Long-term vegetation recovery data collection was funded by a third JFSP project, “How vegetation recovery and fuel conditions in past fires influences fuels and future fire management in five western U.S. ecosystems” (JFSP 14-1-02-27). Final preparation of this report was motivated by a fourth JFSP project, “Hierarchical 3D fuel and consumption maps to support physics-based fire modeling” (JFSP 16-4-1-15). We thank the Cooney Ridge incident firefighters who assisted on the burnout, and Maritza Hathaway for formatting this paper. This research was funded by two Joint Fire Science Program awards to the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station: “Demonstration and integration of systems for fire remote sensing, ground-based fire measurement, and fire modeling” (JFSP-03-S-01) to measure fuels and active fire and “Assessing the causes, consequences and spatial variability of burn severity: A rapid response proposal” (JFSP 03-2-1-02) to measure fire effects. Long-term vegetation recovery data collection was funded by a third JFSP project, “How vegetation recovery and fuel conditions in past fires influences fuels and future fire management in five western U.S. ecosystems” (JFSP 14-1-02-27). Final preparation of this report was motivated by a fourth JFSP project, “Hierarchical 3D fuel and consumption maps to support physics-based fire modeling” (JFSP 16-4-1-15). We thank the Cooney Ridge incident firefighters who assisted on the burnout, and Maritza Hathaway for formatting this paper.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Forest Service-Retired | JFSP 16-4-1-15, JFSP 03-2-1-02, JFSP 14-1-02-27, JFSP-03-S-01 |
Keywords
- Consumption
- Fire effects
- Fire radiant energy
- Fire radiant flux
- Fuel
- Hyperspectral
- Long-wave infrared
- Middle infrared
- Remote sensing
- Spectral mixture analysis