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Construction procedures and utilization of materials to reduce the cost of insuring large buildings against losses from fire are discussed. Examples of good and bad techniques in building construction and fire safety management are provided. The inadequacies of building codes and the hazards resulting from improper construction are examined.
Automatic locating systems which respond to cloud to ground lightning and which discriminate against cloud discharges and background noise are described. Subsystems of the locating system, which include the direction finder and the position analyzer, are discussed. The direction finder senses the electromagnetic fields radiated by lightning on two orthogonal magnetic loop antennas and on a flat plate electric antenna. The position analyzer is a preprogrammed microcomputer system which automatically computes, maps, and records lightning locations in real time using data inputs from the direction finder. The use of the locating systems for wildfire management and fire weather forecasting is discussed.
The spacecraft environmental control and life support systems (ECLSS) for Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Spacelab, the Space Shuttle Orbiter, and Space Station Freedom are reviewed, in addition to the ECLSS on Soviet spacecraft Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, Salyut Space Stations, the Buran Space Shuttle, and the Mir Space Station. Focus is placed on atmosphere control and supply, atmosphere revitalization, potable and supply water systems, waste-management systems, temperature and humidity control, water recovery and management, and fire detection and suppression. It is noted that the ECLSS evolution will continue during the lifetime of Space Station Freedom, leading to further simplifications and closure of the system which will become a controlled ecological life support system (CELSS).
The Core Complete Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) System for the International Space Station (ISS) will consist of components and subsystems in both the United States (U.S.) and International Partner elements which together will perform the functions of Temperature and Humidity Control (THC), Atmosphere Control and Supply (ACS), Atmosphere Revitalization (AR), Water Recovery and Management (WRM), Fire Detection and Suppression (FDS), and Vacuum System (VS) for the station. Due to limited resources available on ISS, detailed attention is given to minimizing and tracking all resources associated with all systems, beginning with estimates during the hardware development phase through measured actuals when flight hardware is built and delivered. A summary of resources consumed by the addition of future U.S. ECLS system hardware to get to Core Complete is presented, including launch weight, average continuous and peak power loads, on-orbit volume and resupply logistics.
A spacecraft's Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) system enables and maintains a habitable and sustaining environment for its crew. A typical ECLS system provides for atmosphere consumables and revitalization, environmental monitoring, pressure, temperature and humidity control, heat rejection (including equipment cooling), food and water supply and management, waste management, and fire detection and suppression. The following is a summary of ECLS systems used in United States (US) and Russian human spacecraft.
The assembly complete Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) s ystem for the International Space Station (ISS) will consist of compo nents and subsystems in both the U.S. and International partner eleme nts which together will perform the functions of Temperature and Hum idity Control (THC), Atmosphere Control and Supply (ACS), Atmosphere Revitalization (AR), Water Recovery and Management (WRM), Fire Detect ion and Suppression (FDS), and Vacuum System (VS) for the station. D ue to limited resources available on ISS, detailed attention is given to minimizing and tracking all resources associated with all systems , beginning with estimates during the hardware development phase thr ough measured actuals when flight hardware is built and delivered. A summary of resources consumed by the current on-orbit U.S. ECLS syste m hardware is presented, including launch weight, average continuous and peak power loads, on-orbit volume and resupply logistics. ..
Through the miracle of open web mapping services for satellite imagery, a garden of new applications has sprouted to monitor the planet across a variety of domains. The Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) provide free and open access to full resolution imagery captured by NASAs Earth observing fleet. Spanning 15+ years and running through as recently as a few hours ago, GIBS aims to provide a general-purpose window into NASA's vast archive of the planet. While the vast nature of this archive can be daunting, many domain-specific applications have been built to meet the needs of their respective communities. This presentation will demonstrate a diverse set of these new applications which can take planetarium visitors into (virtual) orbit, guide fire resource managers to hotspots, help anglers find their next catch, illustrate global air quality patterns to local regulators, and even spur a friendly competition to find clouds which are shaped the most like cats. We hope this garden will continue to grow and will illustrate upcoming upgrades to GIBS which may open new pathways for development. data visualization, web services, open access
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.
Fires in croplands, plantations, and rangelands contribute significantly to fire emissions in the United States, yet are often overshadowed by wildland fires in efforts to develop inventories or estimate responses to climate change. Here we quantified decadal trends, interannual variability, and seasonality of Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) observations of active fires (thermal anomalies) as a function of management type in the contiguous U.S. during 2001-2010. We used the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity database to identify active fires within the perimeter of large wildland fires and land cover maps to identify active fires in croplands. A third class of fires defined as prescribed/other included all residual satellite active fire detections. Large wildland fires were the most variable of all three fire types and had no significant annual trend in the contiguous U.S. during 2001-2010. Active fires in croplands, in contrast, increased at a rate of 3.4 percent per year. Cropland and prescribed/other fire types combined were responsible for 77 percent of the total active fire detections within the U.S and were most abundant in the south and southeast. In the west, cropland active fires decreased at a rate of 5.9 percent per year, likely in response to intensive air quality policies. Potential evaporation was a dominant regulator of the interannual variability of large wildland fires, but had a weaker influence on the other two fire types. Our analysis suggests it may be possible to modify landscape fire emissions within the U.S. by influencing the way fires are used in managed ecosystems.
California chaparral is one of the most important natural vegetation communities in Southern California, representing a significant source of species diversity and, through a high susceptibility to fire, playing a major role in ecosystem dynamics. Due to steep topographic gradients, harsh edaphic conditions and variable fire histories, chaparral typically forms a complex mosaic of different species dominants and age classes, each with unique successional responses to fire and canopy characteristics (e.g. moisture content, biomass, fuel load) that modify fire susceptibility. The high human cost of fire and intimate mixing along the urban interface combine to modify the natural fire regime as well as provide additional impetus for a better understanding of how to predict fire and its management. Management problems have been further magnified by nearly seventy years of fire suppression and drought related die-back over the last few years resulting in a large accumulation of highly combustible fuels. Chaparral communities in the Santa Monica Mountains exemplify many of the management challenges associated with fire and biodiversity. A study was initiated in the Santa Monica Mountains to investigate the use of the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) for providing improved maps of chaparral coupled with direct estimates of canopy attributes (e.g. biomass, leaf area, fuel load). The Santa Monica Mountains are an east-west trending range located approximately 75 kilometers north of Los Angeles extending westward into Ventura County. Within the Santa Monica Mountains a diverse number of ecosystems are located, including four distinct types of chaparral, wetlands, riparian habitats, woodlands, and coastal sage scrub. In this study we focus on mapping three types of chaparral, oak woodlands and grasslands. Chaparral mapped included coastal sage scrub, chamise chaparral and mixed chaparral that consisted predominantly of two species of Ceanothus.
Wildfire smoke is a health hazard as it contains carcinogenic volatile compounds and fine particulate matter. In particular, exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is a major concern, since these compounds have been recognized as important contributors to the overall carcinogenic risk. In this work, gas and particle-phase PAH emissions from combustion of Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus) were quantified using time-of-flight mass spectrometry over a range of burn conditions representative of wildfires and prescribed fires, including fuel moisture, heat flux, and oxygen concentration. We found that changing the burn environment lead to a variability of up to 77% in phenanthrene/anthracene emissions. This could explain a large part of the variability in PAH emission factors from biomass combustion reported in the literature. Here, we found that optimal conditions for fuel moisture content of 20–30%, sample heat load of 60 - 70 kW m -2 , and oxygen concentrations of 5–15% can significantly reduce the emissions of heavy molar weight PAHs. Our analysis showed that the relative carcinogenic risk from PAH exposure can be reduced by more than 50% under optimal conditions. In light of the increasing use of prescribed fire for forest management, the relationship between emissions and burn conditions that we have established provides a guidance for assessing the expected health impact from prescription burns, and can inform strategies to reduce PAH emissions from prescribed fire activities.
On October 24, 1946, more than 10 years before the launch of the first artificial satellite Sputnik, scientists at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico placed a camera on top of a captured German V-2 ballistic missile. As the rocket flew to an altitude of about 65 miles - just above the generally recognized border of outer space - the 35-millimeter motion picture camera snapped a frame every one and a half seconds. Minutes later, the missile came crashing back down and slammed into the ground at more than 340 mph, but the film survived and gave us our first glimpse of Earth from space. Earth Resources Technology Satellite aka Landsat It was images like those first grainy black and white pictures and later those taken by America's first astronauts in the 1960's that inspired the development of the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS). From the unique vantage point of space, we could now observe Earth using a variety of different instruments to monitor changes over time. The ERTS-1 satellite, wisely renamed Landsat-1, was launched aboard a Delta rocket on July 23, 1972, into a Sun-synchronous polar orbit at an altitude of about 560 miles. In this unique orbit, Landsat could observe the same point on the Earth every 18 days, always with the same solar illumination, allowing for precise monitoring of changes on the ground over time. Landsat-1, derived from the highly successful Nimbus weather satellites, carried two instruments that allowed it to take images not only in visible light but also in infrared, well-suited to track changes in vegetation over time. Designed to last only one year, Landsat-1 actually operated for nearly three years, by which time it had been joined in space by Landsat-2, a near identical copy of the original. Since then, ever more sophisticated instruments were flown aboard Landsat-3 through -8, with Landsat-9 planned for launch in 2020, acquiring millions of images of Earth over more than four decades. At first, images from Landsat were processed by NASA and hardcopies sold to users for a fee, a somewhat tedious process. Since 2008, images have been made available to all interested users by the US Geological Survey (USGS) at no cost via the Internet in near real time. So, how can Landsat help? In short, Landsat looks. And looks. And proves Yogi right. Space-based images from Landsat and other similar satellites offer a unique and critical capability to observe land use over time by providing repetitive observations of the Earth otherwise unavailable. The data provided by the images can be used by scientists and politicians to inform wise decisions in areas such as agriculture, climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, energy, forest management, human health, fire, natural disasters, urban growth and water management. This overview article doesn't allow for examples from each of these disciplines, but details can be found at the following website: https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/how_landsat_helps/. One third of the US economy is influenced by climate, weather and natural hazards, providing strong economic incentives to sustain a healthy space-based Earth observation program. One example, however, may be illustrative of how Landsat and other space-based observations can be helpful in monitoring and documenting some effects of global climate change. It had been noted since the 1970's that permafrost in subarctic areas like Siberia was melting at an accelerating rate. It also became apparent that this led to the formation of hundreds of melt lakes and the liberation of large quantities of methane, a gas that in the short-term has more potent greenhouse effects than carbon dioxide. The methane turned the water in these lakes blue, making them easy to track over time by satellite. Additionally, the newly released methane has been carbon dated to tens of thousands of years ago, meaning that it had remained frozen since the last Ice Age and therefore hadn't been accounted for in models of the Earth's overall carbon balance. Release of sufficient methane by an increasingly warming climate could actually cause a positive feedback loop in global warming, melting more permafrost and releasing yet more methane. Further monitoring by Landsat and other platforms will reveal whether this process is reversible or whether we've passed the tipping point. In addition to the highly successful Landsat series of satellites, NASA and other agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operate a fleet of other Earth observing platforms, many with more specific research goals such as monitoring sea ice levels or atmospheric carbon content. Several instruments aboard the International Space Station also contribute to this overall effort to better understand short- and long-term changes to the Earth. Many of these missions are guided by the 2009 Decadal Survey published by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Europe, Russia and China all see the value of space-based Earth observation by deploying their own fleet of satellites.
Drought, beetle infestation, and more frequent wildfires are changing the composition and distribution of the pinyon-juniper woodland and sagebrush ecosystems of the Grand Valley in western Colorado. Land managers must consider short- and long-term goals for restoration as well as budgetary and personnel limitations after such disturbances. Satellite remote sensing can provide long-term and continuous vegetation monitoring to assess where restoration is needed most and where treatment practices are most likely to succeed. Harnessing Earth observation data, our team set out to observe trends in disturbances and the distribution of pinyon-juniper woodlands and sagebrush communities of National Park Service (NPS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands within the Grand Valley. We used imagery from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua and Terra satellites, and Landsat sensors to map landcover change within these ecosystems from 1984-2021. Additionally, we analyzed disturbed areas and treatment sites to understand their effect on long-term vegetation health and recovery. Results showed that pinyon-juniper woodland has expanded in extent more than other landcover types, indicating woody encroachment into sagebrush ecosystems. We also found that wildfire disturbances had lasting impacts up to 20 years post-disturbance. Pre-fire treatment practices showed mixed results regarding their effectiveness at stopping fires and promoting post-fire recovery. These results will provide context to public land managers in the Grand Valley when developing management plans, ecological monitoring locations, and implementing treatment practices for future disturbances.
There are more than 300 million hectares of forested land whithin the conterminious United States essential to sustaining the myriad social/cultural, economic, and ecologic benefits society enjoys from these lands. Nationwide, millions of forested hectares, both private and public, are disappearing functionally and physically throguh serve wildfire fire and land coversion. On many of these lands, management, centered on fire supression, has led to reductions in forest resilience to wildfire. Lands, overstocked with accumulated fuel and faced with a changing climate, are expected to continue this legacy of fire and deteriorating health. A paradigm shift is needed to face the challenges confronting forests and enhance collaborative efforts across multiple foret ownerships. Our ability to leverage emerging technologies and pair them with the knowledge of indigenous peoples presents new opportunities for success. The objectives of this study were to 1) assess the Anchor Forest concept as a framework to leverage collaborative motivations and leadership by indigenous peoples (Tribes) in eastern Washington State to improve forest ecosystem health across legal and political boundaries, 'cross-boundary' management, and 2) demonstrate how the NASA carbon monitoring system (CMS) mapping of products of regional forestland above ground biomass (AGB) density and temporal trends can provide information that supports decisionmakers in their efforts to collaboratively approach improving forest health conditions through management activities.
Although little can be done to reduce the risks of firefighting, something can be done to curb the injuries and fatalities. This is the goal of Project FIRES, a program jointly sponsored by NASA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency's U.S. Fire Administration with technical management provided by Marshall Space Flight Center. Project FIRES (Firefighter's Integrated Response Equipment System) involves applications of advanced materials and design concepts, derived from Apollo to update existing gear which does not adequately protect against many of the hazards encountered in fire suppression activities. A major focus of the effort involves application to the FIRES ensemble of lightweight, fire-resistant, heat-protective materials originally developed for use in astronauts' space suits or in spacecraft components which require thermal protection. Data from the fourteen municipal fire departments participating in the field evaluation will form a basis for development of new nationwide protective ensemble students.
Increasing wildfire activity in mesic, temperate Pacific Northwest forests west of the Cascade Range crest has stimulated interest in understanding whether alternative forest management practices could reduce risk of stand-replacing fire. To explore how management can enhance fire resistance in these forests and assess tradeoffs among resistance enhancement, carbon sequestration and storage, and economic returns, we conducted 40-year simulations of stand development with BioSum, a framework for conducting landscape analysis with the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS), utilizing a statistically representative and spatially balanced sample of Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots. Simulation outcomes under business-as-usual silviculture were contrasted with fire-aware silviculture, and treatment optimization logic was developed and applied to represent landscape-scale outcomes under business-as-usual and fire-focused management scenarios. Simulation results indicate that fire-aware prescriptions and fire-focused management can meaningfully enhance stand- and landscape-scale fire resistance of westside forests under less than extreme fire weather, but at the cost of lower economic returns and reduced net carbon storage and sequestration over the 40-year analysis window. Shifting from business-as-usual regeneration harvests with short rotations to fire-aware, episodic selection harvest improved fire resistance the most, especially in young privately-owned forests, and with only modest tradeoffs in carbon and economic outcomes. While fire-aware treatments generally reduced net present value from forest operations over business-as-usual, most treatments still generated positive net present value and could be implemented without subsidy. Fire-aware prescriptions that removed and utilized non-merchantable harvest residues instead of burning them, via either pile or broadcast burning, partially mitigated carbon emissions associated with fire-aware treatments, with about the same improvement in fire resistance. Given the currently limited institutional and financial capacity to implement fire resistance enhancing treatments at scale, the insights from this analysis may aid managers seeking to elevate fire resistance to prioritize where and how to manage.
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Exceptional fire activity in 2019 sparked concern about Amazon forest conservation. However, the inability to rapidly separate satellite fire detections by fire type hampered fire suppression and assessment of ecosystem and air quality impacts. Here, we describe the development of a near–real-time approach for tracking contributions from deforestation, forest, agricultural, and savanna fires to burned area and emissions and apply the approach to the 2019 fire season in South America. Across the southern Amazon, 19,700 deforestation fire events accounted for 39% of all satellite active fire detections and the majority of fire carbon emissions (63%; 69 Tg C). Multiday fires accounted for 81% of burned area and 92% of carbon emissions from the Amazon, with many forest fires burning uncontrolled for weeks. Most fire detections from deforestation fires were correctly identified within 2 days (67%), highlighting the potential to improve situational awareness and management outcomes during fire emergencies.