Projects
Browse present and past projects.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 141
1909-present
Living things change constantly, as do communities of living things. In a forest, where individual trees can live for centuries and new plants replace old plants, it is not easy to visualize the changes that occur over time. This photoseries… moreContact(s): Duncan Lutes, Sharon Hood
2013-2015
Experiments to Improve Agricultural Smoke Decision Support Tools
Agriculture is a vital part of the Northwest’s economy and is critical to the region’s rural communities. The production cycle of cereal crops and grasses, which are important… moreContact(s): Shawn Urbanski
2017-2025
Wildland fires produce significant air pollution and real-time measurements of these pollutants are critical for mitigating the human health impacts of smoke. With climate change increasing the severity of the western U.S. wildfire season, there is… moreContact(s): Shawn Urbanski
2013-2015
Linking Field-based and Experimental Methods to Quantify, Predict, and Manage Fire Effects on Cultural Resources (Update)
ArcBurn is an experimental fire archaeology project funded by the Joint Fire Science Program, and is a collaborative effort… moreContact(s): Jim Reardon
2005-present
Vegetation and fuel management planning is a complex problem that requires advanced vegetation and fire behavior modeling and intensive spatial data analyses. Both the benefits and potential impacts of proposed treatments must be clearly… moreContact(s): Alan Ager, Michelle Day
2016-present
The first comprehensive assessment of where public wildlands in the Western US potentially contribute wildfire exposure to communities.
Predicting wildfire disasters presents a major challenge to the field of risk science, especially when fires are… moreContact(s): Alan Ager, Michelle Day
2015-2017
Mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins; MPB) is an aggressive bark beetle that attacks numerous Pinus spp. and causes extensive mortality in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Douglas ex Loudon; LPP) forests in the western United States… moreContact(s): Sharon Hood
2002-present
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The BehavePlus fire modeling system is a Windows®-based computer program that can be used for any fire management application that needs to calculate fire behavior. It uses specified fuel and… moreContact(s): Faith Ann Heinsch
2005-2011
Airborne Experiments to Characterize the Emissions of Biomass Burning in Mexico
Biomass burning is the largest source of primary, fine carbonaceous particles and the second largest source of trace gases in the global atmosphere. Emissions from… moreContact(s): Shawn Urbanski, Wei Min Hao
2002-Present
Northern Eurasia covers 20% of the global land mass and contains 70% of the boreal forest. During certain times of the year, black carbon (BC) in smoke plumes at high latitudes may be transported and deposited on Arctic ice, thereby accelerating ice… moreContact(s): Wei Min Hao
2015-2018
Many scientists from the Fire, Fuel, and Smoke program are intimately involved with various aspects of fire management, including both prescribed fires and wildfires. Not only do these activities provide operational experience and the opportunity to… moreContact(s): LaWen Hollingsworth
2011-present
Understanding Burning Rate and Residence Time of Porous Fuel Beds Using Wood Cribs
The fire spread process is fundamentally a series of ignitions, where a parcel of fuel ignites and burns at a particular rate, heating the neighboring fuel parcel… moreContact(s): Sara McAllister
2004-2015
An extensive exploration of field, analysis, and modeling methods to describe and quantify fuels for operational fire management.
This study will develop, evaluate, and compare methods or approaches to measure canopy fuels characteristics and… moreContact(s): Russell Parsons
2009-present
Video and educational lesson about how and why the Pikunii (one branch of the Blackfeet Nation) people transported fire from one camp to another as they traveled along historical migration routes. This activity includes a complete lesson plan,… moreContact(s): Ilana Abrahamson
2011-2016
Wildland fire management teams can be faced with the potential for fires to damage power transmission or telecommunication lines. The damage can be severe enough to cause failure of the system which can have critical implications to public safety.… moreContact(s): Jason Forthofer
2014-present
Wildfires occur at the intersection of dry weather, available fuel, and ignition sources. Weather is the most variable and largest driver of regional burned area. Temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, and wind speed independently influence… moreContact(s): Matt Jolly
2011-present
Research conducted at the Missoula Fire Lab has found that the amount of radiant heat in wildland fires is not sufficient to ignite fine fuel particles such as needles and grasses. These fine fuels are highly efficient at convective heat transfer,… moreContact(s): Sara McAllister
2010-2020
Whitebark pine has been rapidly declining on many National Forests in the northwestern United States over the last three decades because of blister rust infections and mountain pine beetle outbreaks, which have been exacerbated by recent warmer… moreContact(s): Sarah Flanary
2021-2026
Project Goals
A major challenge for wildfire modelling is the ability to span the range of scales of fire phenomena. Fuel particle heat transfer and ignition occur over millimeters but wildfires impact landscapes and communities across kilometers.… moreContact(s): Mark Finney
2012-Present
Considerable effort is expended to determine fuel loadings and to map those loadings across the landscape, yet there is little or no work being done to determine how to incorporate those measurements into the next generation of fire behavior models… moreContact(s): Matt Jolly, Russell Parsons
2001-2006
Predicting Post-fire Douglas-fir Beetle Attacks and Tree Mortality in the Northern Rocky Mountains.
Tree mortality following fire is influenced by multiple factors. Many coniferous species have life history traits and characteristics that can… moreContact(s): Sharon Hood
2008-present
Mapping Potential Dry Lightning Strikes
Dry lightning refers to strikes that produce 0.10 inch or less of rainfall nearby (or 0.25 inch east of the Mississippi River). This kind of lightning storm occurs frequently in the western U.S. during the… moreContact(s): Paul Sopko
2003-2010
Prescribed Burning: Can We Do It Without Killing the Trees We Are Trying to Save?
The use of prescribed fire has become a major tool for restoring fire-dependent ecosystem health throughout the west and use will likely increase in the future.… moreContact(s): Sharon Hood
2011-2013
Synthesis of Wildland Fire Emission Factors
Smoke from wildland fires is a rich and complex mixture of gases and aerosols. Over 200 gas compounds have been identified in biomass smoke and wildland fires are a significant source of carbonaceous… moreContact(s): Shawn Urbanski
2013-present
Increasingly intense fire seasons, rapidly changing ecosystems, and an expanding wildland-urban interface all increase the hazard that fires pose to communities, watersheds, and ecosystems. Fuel treatments offer managers an opportunity to… moreContact(s): Matt Jolly, Russell Parsons