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At least 73 records · Page 4
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

A Fire Community Observatory: Interdisciplinary, AI-informed Post-Fire Rapid Response for Improved Water Cycle Science at Watershed Scale

Wildfire is an ecological disturbance that disrupts the hydrological cycle. In the past few years, a record number of multiple-and-compounding fires have occurred across urban-wildland gradients in the Western United States. Changes to watershed hydrological partitioning in response to fires (infiltration, runoff, evapotranspiration) presents unprecedented challenges to “Water-in-the-West” through negative impacts to water supply and its quality, and is a direct threat to downstream communities, groundwater, and drinking water supply infrastructure. While much work is being done to advance Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) use during fires for emergency response (i.e. predict fire movement, direct evacuations), significant potential exists to use AI/ML to address three scientific grand challenges that are rarely addressed in a convergent science context: 1) how to enhance the potential resiliency of a landscape before fire(s), 2) how to cost-effectively and optimally monitor watershed changes after fires, and 3) how to predict future hydrological and biogeochemical trajectories in fire-impacted watershed given climate change. This whitepaper addresses DOE Focal Area 1: Data acquisition and assimilation enabled by machine learning, AI, and advanced methods.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1994

Biomass Burning and the Production of Greenhouse Gases

Biomass burning is a source of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. In addition, biomass burning is a source of chemically active gases, including carbon monoxide, nonmethane hydrocarbons, and nitric oxide. These gases, along with methane, lead to the chemical production of tropospheric ozone (another greenhouse gas) as well as control the concentration of the hydroxyl radical, which regulates the lifetime of almost every atmospheric gas. Following biomass burning, biogenic emissions of nitrous oxide, nitric oxide, and methane are significantly enhanced. It is hypothesized that enhanced postburn biogenic emissions of these gases are related to fire-induced changes in soil chemistry and/or microbial ecology. Biomass burning, once believed to be a tropical phenomenon, has been demonstrated by satellite imagery to also be a regular feature of the world's boreal forests. One example of biomass burning is the extensive 1987 fire that destroyed more than 12 million acres of boreal forest in the People's Republic of China and across its border in the Soviet Union. Recent estimates indicate that almost all biomass burning is human-initiated and that it is increasing with time. With the formation of greenhouse and chemically active gases as direct combustion products and a longer-term enhancement of biogenic emissions of gases, biomass burning may be a significant driver for global change.

Levine, Joel S.↗
NASA NTRS1988

History of wildland fires on Vandenberg Air Force Base, California

The fire history of the past 50 years for Vandenberg AFB, California was determined using aerial photography, field investigation, and historical and current written records. This constitutes a record of the vegetation age classes for the entire base. The location, cause, and fuel type for sixty fires from this time period were determined. The fires were mapped and entered into a geographic infomation system (GIS) for Vandenberg. Fire history maps derived from this GIS were printed at 1:9600 scale and are on deposit at the Vandenberg Environmental Task Force Office. Although some ecologically significant plant communities on Vandenberg are adapted to fire, no natural fire frequency could be determined, since only one fire possibly caused by lightning occurred in the area now within the base since 1937. Observations made during this study suggest that burning may encourage the invasion of exotic species into chaparral, in particular Burton Mesa or sandhill chaparral, an unusual and geographically limited form of chaparral found on the base.

Hickson, Diana E.↗
NASA NTRS2022

Southern Wyoming Ecological Forecasting: Monitoring Cheatgrass in Southern Wyoming and Northern Colorado to Inform Management Efforts Post-Mullen Fire

Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) is a prominent invasive species in the Intermountain West that has the potential to out-compete native plant species, reduce biodiversity, and reduce the quality of habitat for ungulates. Furthermore, because cheatgrass readily establishes in disturbed landscapes, it can potentially increase fuel loads and exacerbate wildfire risk. In 2020, the Mullen Fire burned 176,878 acres in Carbon and Albany Counties, Wyoming and Jackson County, Colorado. Large fires such as this one raise concern for partners at the United States Forest Service and the United States Geological Survey Fort Collins Science Center, who are tasked with rapidly detecting and controlling invasive species in the post-fire environment. We developed a Random Forest model trained by in-situ field data and spectral indices such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index, and Enhanced Vegetation Index derived from Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager, Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument, and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission to detect and map cheatgrass presence during the 2021 growing season. The team successfully created a spectral cheatgrass detection map in the study area (RMSE = 13.71, R2 = 0.34). We also produced a NDVI time-series derived from Sentinel-2 MSI to analyze vegetation recovery patterns.

Dahlia Shahin↗
NASA NTRS2022

Changes in Land Use Enhance the Sensitivity of Tropical Ecosystems to Fire-Climate Extremes

The Pantanal, the largest contiguous wetland in the world with a high diversity of ecosystems and habitat for several endangered species, was impacted by record-breaking wildfires in 2020. In this study, we integrate satellite and modeling data that enable exploration of natural and human contributing factors to the unprecedented 2020 fires. We demonstrate that the fires were fueled by an exceptional multi-year drought, but dry conditions solely could not explain the spatial patterns of burning. Our analysis reveals how human-caused fires exacerbated drought effects on natural ecosystem within the Pantanal, with large burned fractions primarily over natural (52%), and low cattle density areas (44%) in 2020. The post-fire ecosystem and hydrology changes also had strong ecological effects, with vegetation productivity less than − 1.5 σ over more than 30% of the natural and conservation areas. In contrast to more managed areas, there was a clear decrease in evaporation (by ~ 9%) and an increase in runoff (by ~ 5%) over the natural areas, with long-term impacts on ecosystem recovery and fire risk. This study provides the first tropical evidence outside rainforests of the synergy between climate, land management and fires, and the associated impacts on the ecosystem and hydrology over the largest contiguous wetlands in the world.

Sujay Kumar↗
NASA NTRS2022

Increasing Threat of Wildfires: the Year 2020 in Perspective: A Global Ecology and Biogeography Special Issue

Each year, wild and managed fires burn roughly 4 million km2 [~400 million hectares (Mha)] of savanna, forest, grassland and agricultural ecosystems. Land use and climate change have altered fire regimes throughout the world, with a trend toward higher-severity fires found from Australia, the Americas, Europe and Asia, to the Arctic. In 2020, there were notable catastrophic fires in Australia (in the 2019/20 Austral fire season), the Western United States, South America and Siberia. These fires defined much of the global fire year and were compounded by the socio-economic disruption of the Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Rachael H Nolan↗
NASA NTRS2025

Nevada Wildland Fires: Mapping Historical Burned Areas and Identifying Drivers of Fuel Load Growth to Inform Desert Tortoise Habitat Management in Southern Nevada

Wildfire frequency and intensity in the Mojave desert are increasing, driven by invasive grasses that outcompete native vegetation not well-adapted to wildfire. These grasses, primarily cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and red brome (Bromus rubens), and the wildfires that occur when the grasses ignite, are a serious threat to the critically endangered Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii). Declining Mojave desert tortoise populations are of great concern to project partners, the Bureau of Land Management Southern Nevada District Office, the US Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, and the US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service’s Arid Lands Ecology Lab, who currently lack the resources for fire recovery studies essential for informed fire and invasive grass management. To address this gap, the team utilized NASA Earth observations including Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Terra MODIS, Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM), and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), to analyze trends in burned areas over the past 20 years through historic burn maps and to examine fuel load growth drivers, with a focus on invasive vegetation. These historical burn maps revealed a pattern of precipitation anomalies that strongly correlate with higher Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values. Years with significant precipitation and NDVI spikes led to greater fuel load in the dry season and larger burns. Additionally, El Niño years correlated significantly with precipitation anomalies which may provide our partners with insights into burn trends and enable better allocation of fuel load treatment practices. However, while identifying drivers of fuel load growth proved feasible, a lack of in situ data hindered attempts to analyze pre-fire growth of invasive grasses compared with native grasses. Despite this limitation, the project demonstrated the feasibility of using Earth observations for wildfire and habitat management, ultimately benefiting conservation efforts for the Mojave desert tortoise.

fuel load↗
DOE OSTI2024

Idaho National Laboratory Site Natural Resources: Wildland Fire Recovery Framework

As pressures from invasive species, climate change, and anthropogenic impacts increase across the landscape in the western U.S., managing wildland fire recovery to promote healthy sagebrush steppe becomes an increasingly important stewardship responsibility. The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has developed and implemented wildland fire recovery plans to hasten desirable vegetation re-establishment on several individual fires, but lacks an overarching wildland fire recovery strategy, or framework. The intent of this document is to develop the technical approach and scientific basis for wildland fire recovery at the INL Site and to evaluate the tools available to support it in a comprehensive and broadly applicable format. This wildland fire recovery framework will outline the process of assessing the potential impacts of wildland fire on natural resources, present a range of post-fire recovery options, outline an approach for post-fire monitoring, and provide a template for post-fire recovery plans designed to addresses the specific conditions of each wildland fire. There are numerous benefits to developing a wildland fire recovery framework for the INL Site. The first is streamlining the development of post-fire recovery plans for individual fires. A second benefit is more closely aligning INL’s post-fire planning processes with those of other federal agencies. The development of an INL Site fire recovery framework will also allow resource professionals to consider a broader set of recovery tools than they have before because all proposed tools included in the framework were vetted through the process of scoping and stakeholder review. Finally, this framework is a publicly available document that can be used as a basis for communicating and discussing post-fire natural resource recovery objectives with agency collaborators, conservation partners, and other stakeholders. Through the proactive land stewardship principles outlined in this framework, current INL sustainability initiatives can be enhanced, and future INL mission flexibility will be maintained.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
NASA NTRS2020

DEVELOP Poster: Medicine Bow Disasters

The Medicine Bow National Forest (MBNF) consists of approximately 1,383,790 acres of forested land, grassland, and sagebrush steppe in southeastern Wyoming. Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), an invasive plant species in the Western US, occurs in the grasslands throughout MBNF. Cheatgrass is known to rapidly colonize disturbed sites and dramatically alter historic fire regimes and nutrient/water dynamics as well as outcompete native plant species that are important forage for mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and elk (Cervus canadensis). In 2012, the Squirrel Creek Fire burned approximately 10,587 acres of land within MBNF, exacerbating the spread of cheatgrass. In 2015, the Wyoming Ecological Forecasting DEVELOP team identified areas of high cheatgrass abundance within the fire boundary in order to guide US Forest Service (USFS) herbicide spraying efforts to reduce cheatgrass in 2016. This research used Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) data to create a 2019 probabilistic cheatgrass occurrence map. This map allowed an analysis of the effectiveness of aerial spraying to inform future land management techniques for the USFS. Based on the results of the Generalized Linear Model, we found that treated areas decreased in cheatgrass cover by 36% while untreated areas increased in cheatgrass cover by 6%, suggesting that herbicide treatment has been effective.

Disasters↗
DOE OSTI2023

Rapid Spaceborne Mapping of Wildfire Retardant Drops for Active Wildfire Management

Aerial application of fire retardant is a critical tool for managing wildland fire spread. Retardant applications are carefully planned to maximize fire line effectiveness, improve firefighter safety, protect high-value resources and assets, and limit environmental impact. However, topography, wind, visibility, and aircraft orientation can lead to differences between planned drop locations and the actual placement of the retardant. Information on the precise placement and areal extent of the dropped retardant can provide wildland fire managers with key information to (1) adaptively manage event resources, (2) assess the effectiveness of retardant slowing or stopping fire spread, (3) document location in relation to ecologically sensitive areas; and perform or validate cost-accounting for drop services. This study uses Sentinel-2 satellite data and commonly used machine learning classifiers to test an automated approach for detecting and mapping retardant application. We show that a multiclass model (retardant, burned, unburned, and cloud artifact classes) outperforms a single-class retardant model and that image differencing (post-application minus pre-application) outperforms single-image models. Compared to the random forest and support vector machine, the gradient boosting model performed the best with an overall accuracy of 0.88 and an F1 Score of 0.76 for fire retardant, though results were comparable for all three models. Our approach maps the full areal extent of the dropped retardant within minutes of image availability, rather than linear representations currently mapped by aerial GPS surveys. The development of this capability allows for the rapid assessment of retardant effectiveness and documentation of placement in relation to sensitive environments.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

A late glacial paleoenvironmental and climate record from the Sierra de Juarez, Baja California

Ciénegas are desert wetlands that are strongly correlated with the stability of the hydrologic cycle in arid landscapes. However, these environments are particularly vulnerable to climate change, drought, water diversion, and fire suppression which all have contributed to the degradation of ciénegas along the U.S.-Mexican borderlands. Therefore, identifying the timing of precipitation patterns in this region is of particular interest because of its relationship to many ecological responses of the landscape such as groundwater recharge and fire. Here, we present the first-ever fire paleoenvironmental record from Ciénega Chimeneas, a ciénega complex in the Sierra de Juárez of Baja California. We explore how changes in the amount and seasonality of moisture affected ciénega complexes and fire activity from across the southwestern North American region over the past 45,000 years. Further, our record suggests that during the late glacial period, 41,000–21,000 cal yr BP, the increase of Larrea and Quercus indicate an increase in summer precipitation. Subsequently, when summer precipitation increased, pollen preservation and pollen accumulation rates (PAR) also increased. Increased vegetation allowed for increased fire activity during the late glacial period. Regionally, most of the comparison sites also indicated wet conditions during the full glacial period. However, around 21,000 cal yr BP, effective moisture decreased resulting in a dramatic change in the vegetation assemblage. Specifically, the summer wet taxa disappeared, while pollen preservation and PAR decreased, suggesting a dry period until ~14,000 cal yr BP. Little fire activity is recorded after 21,000 cal yr BP, likely due to the absence of fuels. At ~14,000 cal yr BP, Larrea and Quercus reappear suggesting increased summer precipitation. However, the appearance of Cyperaceae and increases in grasses suggest increased winter precipitation. We suggest that the combination of summer wet and winterwet taxa ~14,000 cal yr BP represents an increase in ENSO conditions, while the summer moisture controls remained relatively constant.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1990

High altitude aircraft remote sensing during the 1988 Yellowstone National Park wildfires

An overview is presented of the effects of the wildfires that occurred in the Yellowstone National Park during 1988 and the techniques employed to combat these fires with the use of remote sensing. The fire management team utilized King-Air and Merlin aircraft flying night missions with a thermal IR line-scanning system. NASA-Ames Research Center assisted with an ER-2 high altitude aircraft with the ability to down-link active data from the aircraft via a teledetection system. The ER-2 was equipped with a multispectral Thematic Mapper Simulator scanner and the resultant map data and video imagery was provided to the fire command personnel for field evaluation and fire suppression activities. This type of information proved very valuable to the fire control management personnel and to the continuing ecological research goals of NASA-Ames scientists analyzing the effects of burn type and severity on ecosystem recovery and development.

Ambrosia, Vincent G.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Cascadia Burning: The historic, but not historically unprecedented, 2020 wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, USA

Abstract Wildfires devastated communities in Oregon and Washington in September 2020, burning almost as much forest west of the Cascade Mountain crest (“the westside”) in 2 weeks (~340,000 ha) as in the previous five decades (~406,00 ha). Unlike dry forests of the interior western United States, temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest have experienced limited recent fire activity, and debates surrounding what drove the 2020 fires, and management strategies to adapt to similar future events, necessitate a scientific evaluation of the fires. We evaluate five questions regarding the 2020 Labor Day fires: (1) How do the 2020 fires compare with historical fires? (2) How did the roles of weather and antecedent climate differ geographically and from the recent past (1979–2019)? (3) How do fire size and severity compare to other recent fires (1985–2019), and how did forest management and prefire forest structure influence burn severity? (4) What impact will these fires have on westside landscapes? and (5) How can we adapt to similar fires in the future? Although 5 of the 2020 fires were much larger than any others in the recent past and burned ~10 times the area in high‐severity patches >10,000 ha, the 2020 fires were remarkably consistent with historical fires. Reports from the early 1900s, along with paleo‐ and dendro‐ecological records, indicate similar and potentially even larger wildfires over the past millennium, many of which shared similar seasonality (late August/early September), weather conditions, and even geographic locations. Consistent with the largest historical fires, strong east winds and anomalously dry conditions drove the rapid spread of high‐severity wildfire in 2020. We found minimal difference in burn severity among stand structural types related to previous management in the 2020 fires. Adaptation strategies for similar fires in the future could benefit by focusing on ignition prevention, fire suppression, and community preparedness, as opposed to fuel treatments that are unlikely to mitigate fire severity during extreme weather. While scientific uncertainties remain regarding the nature of infrequent, high‐severity fires in westside forests, particularly under climate change, adapting to their future occurrence will require different strategies than those in interior, dry forests.

Reilly, Matthew J.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Testing effects of invasive fire ants and disturbance on ant communities of the longleaf pine ecosystem

Invasive species and habitat disturbance are among the most important drivers of biodiversity loss and ecological change. Their individual effects, however, are difficult to disentangle because invasion and disturbance are often intimately linked. Here we test alternative hypotheses to determine if the invasive red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, is a ‘driver’ or simply a ‘passenger’ of ecological change in a longleaf pine ecosystem. We randomly assigned treatments of (1) unmanipulated, (2) soil disturbance, (3) fire ant removal and (4) soil disturbance + fire ant removal to experimental blocks and measured how ant communities changed over 2 years in thirty-six 15-m 2 plots. Additionally, fire ant abundance in removal plots averaged 42% lower in pitfall traps and 95% lower on baits compared to unmanipulated, control plots. Species richness of co-occurring ants also decreased 42% in removal plots, with significant changes in community composition. Soil disturbance alone did not affect ant communities. Fire ant diet breadth—measured using carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes—increased up to 4.7-fold in soil disturbance + removal plots (i.e. 0.84‰ 2 to 3.94‰ 2 ). While non-target impacts of the fire ant removal treatment complicate interpretation, our results suggest fire ants follow an alternative ‘interacting drivers’ model in which partial recovery of some species occurs when populations of an invasive species are reduced. Further recovery of native ants may be limited by persisting, landscape-level effects of fire ants suppressing co-occurring ants below historical levels.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Disentangling the drivers of non-stationarity in tree growth

Tree-ring chronologies are an invaluable data source that provides insight into the ecology and physiology of forests across broad spatial and temporal scales. Furthermore, these data have a foundation in paleoclimatic research and have been used for decades to reconstruct climate, fire and other disturbances for several centuries to millennia into the past. Contemporary ecological studies have also used growth data to examine the responses of trees to environmental variability or biotic and abiotic stressors.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

A putative chordate luciferase from a cosmopolitan tunicate indicates convergent bioluminescence evolution across phyla

Abstract Pyrosomes are tunicates in the phylum Chordata, which also contains vertebrates. Their gigantic blooms play important ecological and biogeochemical roles in oceans. Pyrosoma , meaning “fire-body”, derives from their brilliant bioluminescence. The biochemistry of this light production is unknown, but has been hypothesized to be bacterial in origin. We found that mixing coelenterazine—a eukaryote-specific luciferin—with Pyrosoma atlanticum homogenate produced light. To identify the bioluminescent machinery, we sequenced P. atlanticum transcriptomes and found a sequence match to a cnidarian luciferase (RLuc). We expressed this novel luciferase (PyroLuc) and, combined with coelenterazine, it produced light. A similar gene was recently predicted from a bioluminescent brittle star, indicating that RLuc-like luciferases may have evolved convergently from homologous dehalogenases across phyla (Cnidaria, Echinodermata, and Chordata). This report indicates that a widespread gene may be able to functionally converge, resulting in bioluminescence across animal phyla, and describes and characterizes the first putative chordate luciferase.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2020

Gila Water Resources II: Using Earth Observations to Identify Wildfire Impacts on Hydrologic Functions and Recovery in the Gila National Forest

Wildfires have the potential to cause devastating and long-lasting impacts on ecological systems. In the Gila National Forest (Gila NF), wildfire events have occurred with increasing frequency and severity over recent years. These disturbances, such as the historic Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire (2012) and Silver Fire (2013), have raised concerns over post-fire flooding, debris flows, and vegetation recovery. Understanding connections between burn events and ecological functions is crucial for developing effective land management practices within the Gila NF that ensure conservation of the watershed. The Gila Water Resources II team worked in partnership with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) US Forest Service’s (USFS) Gila National Forest and Region 3. This project provided insight into the influence of wildfires on increased flooding events and determined if restoration efforts in the Gila NF are having a beneficial impact on vegetation regeneration. To understand recovery trends and hydrologic impact in the Gila NF between 2000-2019, this project used Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper, Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus, Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager, Global Precipitation Measurement Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM precipitation, along with ancillary data from USGS stream gauges and data provided by USDA USFS’s Gila National Forest and Region 3. Based on these data, the team identified burn areas that received restorative treatments and compared Normalized Burn Ratio for different land cover types to better inform land management decisions. Additionally, the team analyzed the relationship between precipitation and streamflow from stream gauges to investigate the impact wildfires have on hydrology within the watershed.

Water Resources↗