Why and How to take Fire Behavior Observations
Background: Understanding fire behavior comes through observation of multiple fuel and fire weather conditions. It is not practical or possible to observe fire behavior under a broad spectrum of conditions and locations. A library of videos that capture fire behavior and fuels under an ever-expanding set of conditions will broaden our understanding of how fire works and has untold applications for training and modeling.
Deliverable: These observations will be compiled and organized so they can be accessed by either geographic location, fuel type, or fire behavior. Fuel pictures will be entered into a program that will map the fuel loading for the area. The eventual hope is to have a fuel loading app that will allow users to take a picture of their fuel bed which will be correlated to a fuel bed in a system and associate it with observed fire behavior under a variety of conditions.
Deliverable: These observations will be compiled and organized so they can be accessed by either geographic location, fuel type, or fire behavior. Fuel pictures will be entered into a program that will map the fuel loading for the area. The eventual hope is to have a fuel loading app that will allow users to take a picture of their fuel bed which will be correlated to a fuel bed in a system and associate it with observed fire behavior under a variety of conditions.
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Fire Behavior Observation Form - This form will allow you to submit all the inforamtion, pictures and videos for your observation. Please make a new submission for each obervation you take so I am sure to connect the right footage to the location. Thank you so much for your help! Trouble submitting? Email [email protected] Hit the easy button on weather and location by using the Fire Weather Calculator app and just send the .kml file to [email protected]. You would still need to upload the pictures and videos. |
Writen instructions for taking fire observations
Observations:
- Fuel – 2 picture – one from above and one from the side.
- For more active fires with distant observations this can be skipped or pick a representative fuel loading area.
- Fire Behavior - 30 seconds to 2 minute video
- Preferred - head fire, but other types are great too.
- General location so I can get the nearest RAWS station
- Preferred - Lat and Long so I can correlate it with the LANDFIRE fuel model
- Weather – suggest a RAWS station to use
- Preferred – on-site weather conditions.
- Fuel Moisture – also gathered from closest RAWS
- Preferred - Fuel moistures collected with protimeter or oven-dried if a sample was taken recently.
- Share – observations can be emailed to [email protected] or posted to google drive. Make a folder for your observations.