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At least 343 records · Page 19
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Analysis of CO Transport from Australia Fires and Its Impact to Ozone, Water Vapor and Clouds Using CrIS Single-Field-of-View Sounder Products and Other Remote Sensing and MERRA-2 Reanalysis Data

Australia’s unprecedented fire disasters at the end of 2019 to early 2020 emitted huge amounts of carbon monoxide (CO) and fire aerosol particles, and the long-range transport of the smoke plumes poses great impact to climate change, such as altering the Antarctic ozone (O3) hole. Spaceborne observations from satellites have been proven successful in monitoring CO from wildfires in the past decade and can be used to examine the associated CO transport. The primary remote sensing data used in this study is the Single Field of View (SFOV) Sounder Atmospheric Product (SiFSAP) derived from the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) on SNPP, a new product that will be generated at NASA and released to the public in a few months. SiFSAP has a high spatial resolution of ~14 km and includes atmospheric profiles of temperature, water vapor, CO, O3, as well as cloud products, and as the SiFSAP algorithm performs both day- and night-time retrievals, it provides an additional observation for night-time in comparison to the day-time-only solar polar satellite instruments such as MOPPIT, OMPS, and TROPOMI. Most recent significant improvements in the quality of this product plus its good spatial resolution (better than most global weather and climate models) enable us to conduct process-oriented analysis of CO transport, and the variation of water vapor, O3 and clouds (optical depth, effective radius and cloud height) within and around the fire plumes. The wind fields from MERRA-2 reanalysis will be used to help characterize the transport. Other remote sensing data, such as CO from AIRS, MOPPIT and TROPOMI, O3 from OMPS and TROPOMI, as well as the UV aerosol index from OMI and OMPS, will be used and compared with SiFSAP sounder products. Cross-validation of CO and O3 from these different sensors with the corresponding MERRA-2 products will also be carried out. Along the plume transport path, some enhancement of O3 and correlation between fire aerosol, cloud optical depth and water vapor have been found but need further investigation. Using the transport of fire plumes over the Southern Pacific Ocean as a unique testbed, this study will demonstrate the trace species monitoring capability of current satellite observations, in particular, for CO and O3, and hopefully, it will provide some insight on the impacts on fire emissions on air quality and climate.

Xiaozhen (Shawn) Xiong↗
NASA NTRS2023

Fire Station #2, Former Sewage Treatment Plant #17, and Towway Area-SWMU 114 PFAS Site Assessment Progress Report Kennedy Space Center, Florida

This PFAS Site Assessment Progress Report (SAPR) presents the findings of the 2022 PFAS investigation conducted from November 2021 through August 2022 at Solid Waste Management Unit (SWMU) 114 located within Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida. SWMU 114 includes area around Fire Station #2, Former Sewage Treatment Plant #17, the southern portion of the Shuttle Landing Facility Runway, Remote Launch Vehicle Hangar, and the Towway area. Fire Station #2 was constructed in 2008 and is currently active, housing fire station personnel and equipment, including aqueous film forming foam (AFFF). Releases of AFFF has occurred at SWMU 114. Previous environmental assessments have been performed at SWMU 114, including soil, groundwater, and surface water sampling for volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, total petroleum hydrocarbons, and metals. No active remediation has been performed at the SWMU 114. PFAS site assessment field activities were conducted at SWMU 114 from November 2021 through August 2022. During the 2021-2022 Site Assessment, 124 direct-push samples were collected from 27 locations, 17 surface water samples were collected from 15 locations, 41 groundwater samples were collected from 37 newly installed monitoring wells, five concrete samples were collected from four locations, and one asphalt sample was collected. Additionally, two soil borings were advanced to 60 feet for lithologic descriptions, ten staff gauges were installed, and one round of water level measurements were collected from monitoring wells and staff gauges for groundwater flow determination. All groundwater and surface water samples were analyzed for 25 PFAS analytes by USEPA Method 537M. Concrete, and asphalt samples were analyzed by synthetic precipitation leaching procedure (SPLP) PFAS analysis by USEPA Modified Method 537M. Groundwater results were compared to the most recent Regional Screening Levels (RSLs) published by USEPA for residential tap water (USEPA, 2022a) to determine the extent of PFAS contamination at SWMU 114 for six PFAS analytes (PFOA, PFNA, PFBS, PFHxS, PFOS, and GenX). Surface water results were compared to the FDEP surface water screening levels (SW SLs) (FDEP, 2020) for PFOA and PFOS. The PFAS investigation concluded that groundwater exceeding RSLs extends east and south to Banana Creek and west to approximately the center of the SLF runway. The extent of PFAS is approximated to the north, to an area between Sharkey Road and Astronaut Road, where samples below the RSLs do not fully bound SWMU 114. At least two distinct PFAS source areas are located near Fire Station #2 and along Towway, at S114-MW0007S, within SWMU 114. Groundwater head measurements indicate that flow at SWMU 114 is generally similar across the shallow and intermediate water tables. A northeast to southwest trending groundwater divide is located near the middle of Towway where groundwater southeast of the divide flows to the south and groundwater northwest of the divide flows to the west. The groundwater divide generally separates the two areas of higher PFAS concentrations. Surface water samples indicated concentrations of PFOS above the SW SLs in surface water bodies across the site. Further assessment and sampling are required to better understand the interaction between groundwater and surface water at SWMU 114. Concrete and asphalt samples collected confirm that a significant release of AFFF occurred near the stormwater pond northwest of Fire Station #2. Additional concrete samples surrounding Fire Station #2 and at the northwest and southeast edges of the SLF tarmac indicate elevated PFOS concentrations. These results indicate that discharges of AFFF in these locations have infiltrated into asphalt and concrete and may act as a continuing source of PFAS to groundwater and surface water after rain events. Additional direct-push samples are required to delineate PFAS at SWMU 114. Samples may need to extend beyond the Former SLF Rescue Building and Morpheous Test Site to delineate PFAS in groundwater. Monitoring wells should be sampled and gauged quarterly to determine if seasonal impacts are observable, especially in shallow wells near surface water features. Furthermore, surface water samples should be collected from additional ditches to further define the extent of surface water impacts at SWMU 114 and extending along the SLF runway. Staff gauges should be gauged quarterly with groundwater gauging to determine surface water flow and interaction with groundwater. The PFAS sampling results and path forward for SWMU 114 were presented to the KSC Remediation Team in October 2022. Once the PFAS SAPR is approved, it will be submitted to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Howard Franklin Fowler↗
DOE OSTI2025

Impact of grassland fire dynamics on particulate emission factors

Understanding particulate emission factors in grassland fires is critical for improving air quality assessments and refining emissions inventories. This study explores the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of fire processes and their influence on particulate emissions. Traditional emission factor inventories often rely on static values, overlooking the spatially and temporally variable dynamics of fire behavior. Through field experiments conducted at Konza Prairie Biological Station measuring emissions with uncrewed aerial vehicles, and computational modeling using HIGRAD/FIRETEC, this research highlights the dependency of emission production on localized fire dynamics, including ignition patterns, fuel properties, and atmospheric conditions. The results demonstrate a need for fire dynamic considerations to accurately capture emissions variability.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Testing- and Model- Based Optimization of Coal-fired Primary Heater Design for Indirect Supercritical CO 2 Power Cycles (Final Scientific and Technical Report)

The overall objective of this project was to perform the R&D necessary to mitigate the risk associated with the design of a primary heat exchanger for a solid-fired combustion system coupled with an indirect-fired closed-loop Brayton Cycle utilizing supercritical CO 2 . The key technological hurdle was the coupling of a solid-fuel firing system with the primary heater, which poses a singular challenge, which is the management of burner performance and operational conditions in a way to manage heat exchanger tube metal temperatures and temperature ramp rates in the absence of fluid phase change on the inside of the tubes. We designed and built the first ever pseudo power system employing a simple recuperated supercritical CO 2 closed-loop Brayton Cycle coupled to a solid-fuel fired system. Advanced coupled CFD and process modeling were used to design the primary heat exchanger (PHX), which consisted of both radiative and convective sections, to limit tube metal temperatures resulting from the heat release profile of the solid fuel flame near the radiative tubes. The heat exchanger was designed to produce finished CO 2 temperatures of 600 °C a pressure of 20.7 MPa and CO 2 flow of 5.5 kg/s. The constructed PHX was capable of 1.2 MWth heat uptake. During design of the PHX, the modeling showed that most variables influencing flame shape (burner stoichiometric ratio and register velocities and swirl) were not suitable to manage heat flux to the metal surfaces. This is because they substantially increased adiabatic flame temperature through the influence of localized stoichiometric ratio. Excess air and firing rate were the two most powerful variables that could be used to control tube surface temperatures. The coupled system was operated for a total of 407 hours, with the longest continuous run of 248 hours. For 62% of the operational time, the unit was unmanned and in automatic control. The fuels used for the testing included natural gas, two Utah Bituminous coals, woody biomass, and bagasse. During the testing we were able to verify the 1.2 MWth heat uptake and we operated at a finished CO 2 temperature of 607 °C and a pressure of 20.3 MPa simultaneously. The real-time corrosion rate of the Super 304H tube CO 2 surface in the region of the radiative section of the PHX were measured, at an approximate temperature of 550 °C. The two key variables related to corrosion rate are the pressure and flow rate of the CO 2 . A technoeconomic analysis was performed at a scale of 120 MWE. The updated analysis showed that the efficiency of an sCO 2 power producing plant will be related to the pressure drop of the PHX.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗
NASA NTRS2014

Global Top-Down Smoke-Aerosol Emissions Estimation Using Satellite Fire Radiative Power Measurements

Fire emissions estimates have long been based on bottom-up approaches that are not only complex, but also fraught with compounding uncertainties. We present the development of a global gridded (1 deg ×1 deg) emission coefficients (Ce) product for smoke total particulate matter (TPM) based on a top-down approach using coincident measurements of fire radiative power (FRP) and aerosol optical thickness (AOT) from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites. This new Fire Energetics and Emissions Research version 1.0 (FEER.v1) Ce product has now been released to the community and can be obtained from http://feer.gsfc. nasa.gov/, along with the corresponding 1-to-1 mapping of their quality assurance (QA) flags that will enable the Ce values to be filtered by quality for use in various applications. The regional averages of Ce values for different ecosystem types were found to be in the ranges of 16-21/gMJ−1 for savanna and grasslands, 15-32/gMJ−1 for tropical forest, 9-12/gMJ−1 for North American boreal forest, and 18- 26/MJ−1 for Russian boreal forest, croplands and natural vegetation. The FEER.v1 Ce product was multiplied by time-integrated FRP data to calculate regional smoke TPM emissions, which were compared with equivalent emissions products from three existing inventories. FEER.v1 showed higher and more reasonable smoke TPM estimates than two other emissions inventories that are based on bottom-up approaches and already reported in the literature to be too low, but portrayed an overall reasonable agreement with another top-down approach. This suggests that top-down approaches may hold better promise and need to be further developed to accelerate the reduction of uncertainty associated with fire emissions estimation in air-quality and climate research and applications. Results of the analysis of FEER.v1 data for 2004-2011 show that 65-85 Tg yr−1 of TPM is emitted globally from open biomass burning, with a generally decreasing trend over this short time period. The FEER.v1 Ce product is the first global gridded product in the family of "emission factors", that is based essentially on satellite measurements, and requires only direct satellite FRP measurements of an actively burning fire anywhere to evaluate its emission rate in near-real time, which is essential for operational activities, such as the monitoring and forecasting of smoke emission impacts on air quality.

biomass burning↗
NASA NTRS2018

Fire Induced Rock Spalls as Long-Term Traps for Ash

Severe fires accelerate rock weathering by spalling and exfoliation, creating abundant peels, flakes or spalls. In the following years, these spalls serve as physical traps which accommodate fine particles of dust, ash, organic matter, etc. We searched for traces of ash trapped under the spalls, after four major fires: 1989, 2005, 2010 and 2015 in Israel. Samples were collected beneath the spalls that formed on the rock outcrops, and in the immediate vicinity above and below them. Three laboratory analyses were performed: pH, EC and color. Five mineral/organic compounds were measured across the Mid-Infrared (MIR) spectral region at diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform mode: Hydroxylapatite (HAp), charcoal, organic carbon, montmorillonite and kaolinite. Several statistical analyses were performed: MANOVA, PCA and silhouette analysis on K-means clustering. The results show evidence of ash trapped under the spalls formed during the 2005 and 2010 fires, 6 to 11 years after the fires. Charcoal presence is evident, as well as increased amounts of HAp and organic carbon. In the exposed soil above or below the burned rock outcrop, these values are lower. Negligible amounts of ash were measured 27 years after the fire. In the 2015 burned outcrop, large amounts of charcoal were found above and below the outcrop, but not under the spalls. It seems that on the carbonate slopes of Israel and under Mediterranean climate, the time required for spalls to begin functioning as traps is longer than one rainy season, while ash traces are preserved in these traps for a period of two-three decades.

ash↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Spacecraft Fire Safety Technology Development Plan For Exploration Missions

To date, NASA’s spaceflight operations in the past 5 decades have been limited to a narrow range of conditions from a fire safety perspective. The currently anticipated missions outside of low earth orbit will substantially expand this parameter space to include, extended durations, dormancy intervals, increased oxygen concentrations, partial gravity conditions and the presence of surface dust. All of these changes can have significant impacts on fire safety system design and operations. The overall state of understanding is discussed in this paper along with the identification of the needs for spacecraft fire safety technology development. These needs have been assembled into a roadmap maintained by the Environmental Control and Life Support System Capability Leadership Team that has evolved as the exploration mission concepts have changed. This roadmap continues to communicate the spacecraft fire safety needs for exploration and guide technology development efforts. This paper summarizes the major recent developments in our understanding of spacecraft fire behavior and mitigation. A review of the major technology development needs and discussion of their objectives, status, and future plans is presented. The plan for transitioning knowledge, hardware, and modeling capability resulting from these development efforts to specific exploration vehicle programs and missions is also discussed.

Fire safety↗
NASA NTRS2020

Ensemble PM2.5 Forecasting during the 2018 Camp Fire Event Using the HYSPLIT Transport and Dispersion Model

Biomass burning releases a vast amount of aerosols into the atmosphere, often leading to severe air quality and health problems. Prediction of the air quality effects from biomass burning emissions is challenging due to uncertainties in fire emission, plume rise calculation, and other model inputs/processes. Ensemble forecasting is increasingly used to represent model uncertainties. In this paper, an ensemble forecast was conducted to predict surface PM2.5 during the 2018 California Camp Fire event using the NOAA HYSPLIT dispersion model at 0.1- degree horizontal resolution. Different combinations of four satellite-based fire emission datasets (FEER, FLAMBE, GBBEPx and GFAS), two plume rise schemes (Briggs and Sofiev), various meteorology inputs and model setup options were used to create the forecast ensemble, for a total of 112 experiments. The performance of each ensemble member and the ensemble mean were evaluated using ground-based observations, with four statistical metrics and an overall rank. The ensemble spread of the 112 members reached 1000 μg/m3, highlighting the large uncertainty in wildfire forecast. The ensemble mean displayed the best performance. Each fire emission product contributed to one or more members among the top ten performers, revealing the forecasting dependence on both the quality of fire emissions data and model representation of emission, transport and removal processes. In addition, an ensemble size reduction technique was introduced. With the help of this technique, the ensemble size was reduced from 112 to 28 members and still produced an ensemble mean that yielded comparable or even better performance to that of the full ensemble.

Biomass Burning↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Hot on the Trail: Mapping Wildland Fires With Citizen Science and Live Image Processing

Heightened fire activity is straining existing firefighting resources and budgets across the nation and worldwide. For this reason, the 2021 NASA Academy at Langley Research Center has the challenge of applying NASA technology to the challenges faced by wild-land firefighting professionals. The approach is three-fold: Data Acquisition, Communications, and Equipment Development. The Communications Team focused on improving data latency for fire mapping and advancing communications between civilians and incident dispatch. The team developed two main concepts to address these areas: First, they tried to identify, map, and transmit fire perimeter data via an Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS), and second, they suggest a fully functioning web-app for early fire detection and fire monitoring using citizen science. This report outlines the materials and methods of these concepts, as well as future work necessary to bring the proposed technology into the field.

UAS data transfer ground stations↗
NASA NTRS2024

The Future of Arctic Fires: Leveraging Ongoing Activities, New Efforts, and International Cooperation

Fires in the Arctic region are gaining more attention and driving increased concern from the public, the scientific community, and policymakers. An increasing number of scientific projects, collaboration efforts, media coverage, and policy assessments have been and are being implemented and published regarding this emerging and important wildland fire phenomenon. In short, this increased activity comes from the recognition of increasing fire risk and activity close to, within, and impacting the Arctic. There is a need to integrate these numerous and expanding local, national, and international efforts to avoid redundant and overlapping efforts and to focus resources more efficiently. As a response, this report suggests short and long-term goals to respond to the growing fire risk and fire danger in the Arctic. All efforts call for more integrated international collaboration and greater recognition of the importance for Arctic communities to be collaborators and leaders.

Future↗
DOE OSTI2024

Intern Poster - Characterizing Wildland Fire Conditions for Lab-Scale Testing of Advanced Conductors

As the demand for energy increases each year, electric utilities face the challenge of delivering more power than before. Current transmission/distribution networks have proved reliable in the past but are physically unable to meet higher energy demands. Traditional overhead conductor cables (such as Aluminum Conductor Steel Reinforced (ACSR)) are limited in their ability to hold more voltage due to increased temperatures and resulting sag. When the cable sags, it comes closer to the ground, violating clearance standards and presenting an environmental risk. Newly developed advanced conductors, aluminum conductors with carbon fiber composite cores (instead of steel) mitigate this risk. Advanced conductors are engineered to perform in higher operating temperatures without sagging, thus possessing higher capacity potential. Regardless, utilities are hesitant to adopt this new technology due to scarcity of use data. The largest looming risk for utilities is wildland fires. There is little to no data on how advanced conductors perform in the event of a wildland fire. To address these concerns, this project aims to test the mechanical performance of advanced conductors in these conditions, providing utilities use data for their reference. The initial steps of the project will be to design and construct a fire table apparatus to reproduce wildland fire conditions, calculate proper parameters for this testing, and analyze the impact mathematically. After completing these actions, the next steps will be to test the advanced conductors in the laboratory fire chamber.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Long-term patterns of post-fire harvest diverge among ownerships in the Pacific West, U.S.A.

Abstract Post-fire harvest (PFH) is a forest management practice designed to salvage value from burned timber, mitigate safety hazards from dead trees, reduce long-term fuels, and prepare sites for replanting. Despite public controversy and extensive ecological research, little is known about how much PFH occurs on private and public lands in the U.S. Pacific West, or how practices changed with shifting forest policy and increasing area burned over the last three decades. We mapped PFH across 2.2M burned hectares in California, Oregon, and Washington between 1986-2017 and used time series intervention analysis to compare trends in area, rate (% of burned area harvested), and mean patch size between private (0.5M ha) and federal (1.6M ha) forest land and across a gradient of burn severity. Harvest rates varied by ownership (4.9% federal, 18.6% private, 8.0% overall), and practices evolved and diverged over the study period. PFH area and rate declined across all ownerships in the mid-1990s during a period of reduced fire activity. As area burned increased between the early 2000s and late 2010s, PFH area rebounded and surpassed late-1980s levels, while rates remained relatively low. On federal lands, PFH practices shifted in the early-to-mid 1990s towards lower rates (10.3% to 3.8%) and smaller patches (6.0 to 3.3 ha), following policy changes and increased litigation. PFH rates on federal lands decreased at all levels of burn severity, with the largest decreases (6.2% to 1.2%) in forests with low tree mortality (i.e. fire refugia). Conversely, private PFH rates and mean patch sizes more than doubled in forests burned at very low-to-moderate severity. Our results highlight how PFH practices have shifted with policy, socio-economic pressure, and increasing area burned over 31 years in the Pacific West. A similar area of post-fire harvest is now dispersed over larger fires, with practices diverging substantially between ownerships.

Zuspan, Aaron (ORCID:0000000315833710)↗
DOE OSTI2025

Structural uncertainty assessment for fire-engulfed objects in crosswind: Establishing credibility for a multiphysics wall-modeled large-eddy simulation paradigm

A structural uncertainty validation study for a large-scale, fire-engulfed, elevated object subjected to crosswind is presented to establish the credibility of a high-fidelity, low-Mach, turbulent reacting flow wall-modeled large-eddy simulation (WMLES) approach that includes multiphysics coupling to participating media radiation and conjugate heat transfer. To establish that WMLES can accurately predict surface quantities including drag and pressure coefficient in the low-Mach crosswind regime, a foundational elevated isothermal cylinder validation case is presented at a similar gap-to-diameter ratio of 0.25, spanning the subcritical to supercritical drag regime (Re 𝐷 = 1.1 × 10 5 and 4.3 × 10 5 , respectively). Here, this study exercised both static and dynamic coefficient LES (Smagorinsky and 𝑘 sgs ) with both local and exchange-based velocity sampling. Results showcase that the drag crisis (or the sudden drop in drag coefficient at increased Re 𝐷 ) is well captured when using an exchange-based dynamic coefficient WMLES methodology, while noting lack of mesh convergence and overall drag and pressure coefficient predictively when using a static coefficient, local velocity sampling WMLES. For the 𝒪⁡(10) m JP-8 liquid pool fire crosswind validation study presented, two experimental crosswind configurations (2 m/s and 9.5 m/s) are showcased for a fire-engulfed mock fuselage roughly 4 m in diameter. Using the best model-form practices identified in the isothermal study, dynamic coefficient 𝑘 sgs exchange-based WMLES fire validation findings demonstrate accurate peak irradiation and skin temperature predictions as a function of crosswind magnitude. Excessive yaw in the low-crosswind fuselage configuration, consistent with experimental findings, captured a significant predicted asymmetry in flame attachment and heat flux toward the downwind cylindrical cap—indicative of axial vortex structures transporting the flame along the upper and lower fuselage leeward surface. All fire mesh resolution simulations captured the experimental finding that as crosswind increased, predicted flame shape and peak irradiation magnitude onto the fuselage transitioned from a windward to a leeward cylinder location due to the migration of the upper- to lower-shear fuel/air mixing layer thereby demonstrating the novelty, significance, and credibility of this high-fidelity WMLES reacting flow framework.

Domino, Stefan Paul [Sandia National Laboratories ↗
DOE OSTI2024

Heat Transfer Through a Passive Fire Protective Board from an Impinging Hydrogen Flame

This report documents analysis to determine whether a hydrogen jet flame impinging on a tunnel ceiling structure could result in permanent damage to the Callahan tunnel in Boston, Massachusetts. This tunnel ceiling structure consists of a passive fire protective board supported by stainless steel hangers anchored to the tunnel ceiling with epoxy. Three types of fire protective boards were considered to determine whether heat from the flame could reach the stainless-steel hangers and the epoxy and cause the ceiling structure to collapse. Heat transfer analyses performed showed that the temperature remains constant where the steel hangers are attached to the passive fire protective board. According to these results, the passive fire protective board should provide adequate protection to the tunnel structure in this release scenario. Tunnel structures with similar suspended fire-resistant liner board materials should protect the integrity of the structure against the extremely low probability of an impinging hydrogen jet flame.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2025

Fire and Drought Affect Multiple Aspects of Diversity in a Migratory Bird Stopover Community

Drought and high-severity, stand-replacing wildfires can have substantial impacts on the composition of avian communities, including stop-over communities during migration. An inextricable link exists between drought and wildfire, each operating and impacting across different timescales. Many studies have found nonlinear avian abundance trends in breeding community time series data that include pre- and post-fire observations, describing an initial decrease in abundance followed by rapid increases that can attenuate over time. Here, we use a fall bird-banding dataset to evaluate shifts in a drought-impacted avian community following wildfire from taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic perspectives. We looked at the community as a whole and also categorized birds as residents, migrants, and breeders to assess potential varying responses at the study site. We observed post-fire shifts in functional and phylogenetic diversity that corresponded to changes in vegetation. An influx of migratory insectivores post-fire drove much of the variation between pre- and post-fire avian communities and toward a more related, less phylogenetically dispersed community. A concurrent monsoon season drought was also associated with functional and phylogenetic diversity, highlighting the intertwined pulse press effects on avian communities. Overall, our results suggest that, although bird communities are immediately impacted by fire-driven resource changes, they can rebound over time, it is unclear how long-term drought may continue to shape the composition of these avian communities.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Interplay of Topography, Fire History, and Climate on Interior Alaska Boreal Forest Vegetation Dynamics in the 21st Century: A Landsat Time-Series Analysis

This study investigates vegetation dynamics in boreal forests of Interior Alaska, focusing on topography, fire history, and climate influences. The study area includes Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest (BCEF) and surrounding region, categorized by topography (upland, floodplain, lowland) and fire history. Using Mann–Kendall trend and Theil–Sen slope analyses on Landsat-derived spectral metrics: Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR), we observed a shift from browning to greening trends, particularly in historically burned areas. The photosynthetic activity in burned upland converged with unburned areas ~30 years post-fire, coincident with a shift towards deciduous dominance during post-fire succession. Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) trends revealed a significant increase in vegetation moisture content across all topographies. We introduce Effective Seasonal Precipitation Index (ESPI), which combines prior-year annual precipitation with current-year spring snow depth. Its positive correlation with NDMI highlights its potential for monitoring vegetation moisture dynamics at the landscape scale. Furthermore, by correlating dendrochronology-based climate indices, we found strong correlation between NDMI and normalized Supplemental Precipitation Index (nSPI), across topographies. Overall, this research provides critical insights into how climate and fire influence interior boreal vegetation, highlighting the effects of increased precipitation, and topography on shaping differential vegetation responses across the landscape.

Google Earth Engine↗
NASA NTRS1971

Applications of aerospace technology in industry, a technology transfer profile: Fire safety

The fire safety field is considered as being composed of three parts: an industry, a technology base, and a user base. An overview of the field is presented, including a perspective on the magnitude of the national fire safety problem. Selected NASA contributions to the technology of fire safety are considered. Communication mechanisms, particularly conferences and publications, used by NASA to alert the community to new developments in the fire safety field, are reviewed. Several examples of nonaerospace applications of NASA-generated fire safety technology are also presented. Issues associated with attempts to transfer this technology from the space program to other sectors of the American economy are outlined.

Kottenstette, J. P.↗
NASA NTRS1972

Experiments with the Skylab fire detectors in zero gravity

The Skylab fire detector was evaluated in a zero gravity environment. To conduct the test, small samples of spacecraft materials were ignited in a 5 psi oxygen-rich atmosphere inside a combustion chamber. The chamber free-floated in the cabin of a C-135 aircraft, as the aircraft executed a Keplerian parabola. Up to 10 seconds of zero-gravity combustion were achieved. The Skylab fire-detector tubes viewed the flames from a simulated distance of 3m, and color movies were taken to record the nature of the fire. The experiments established the unique form of zero-gravity fires for a wide range of materials. From the tube-output data, the alarm threshold and detector time constant were verified for the Skylab Fire Detection System.

Linford, R. M. F.↗