RESEARCH DIRECTIONS FOR WILDLAND FIRE AND AIR QUALITY FOR USDA FOREST SERVICE: MANAGING FIRE AND WITH NEW TECHNIQUES FOR DATA GATHERING, COMPUTER MODELING, AND DATA VISUALIIZATION

 

A. R. Riebau, Ph.D.

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Research and
Development, Wildlife, Fisheries, Watershed and Air Research, Washington, USA

 

Wildland Fire in the United States is an issue of continuing public concern and scientific challenge. In fiscal years 2001 and 2002, Forest Service Research Development began a program of research including 78 projects in four topic areas. The four topic areas are: 1. Firefighting capacity; 2. Rehabilitation and restoration; 3. Hazardous fuels reduction; and; 4. Community assistance. Much of this work can be seen as a complement to the Joint Fire Sciences Program, which has a focus on fuels management. One of the major challenges for fire managers is air quality management and potential air quality conflict with fuels management strategies. Through national networks such as the Interagency Monitoring Program for Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) for visibility, rapid advances in weather and air pollution modeling, combined with ground based monitoring supplemented and expanded by remote sensing, fire managers will be able to extrapolate information over entire air quality regions. The air quality issue, and the research needed to solve it, will perhaps be a prototype for future research directions in diverse topics such as watershed management, wildlife habitat condition assessments, and fuels management.