Applied Science
Tim Sexton, who worked as a deputy IC on the Richardson Zone, felt that the FSPro runs were valuable in managing the fire. "For the purposes we used it, FSPro performed well. It gave an accurate assessment of what the fire might do. When that was updated with reality and operations analysis, it was useful."
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Rocky Opliger was the IC for the second IMT team to transition through the southern Live Oak Zone — an area of the fire that threatened the Santa Barbara front country. He felt that FSPro helped the team's strategy in a number of ways.
"When we took over, the plan was to continue firing down to Pendola, but I thought that there were some problems with that approach. First, that would involve burning up a large portion of the watershed for Santa Barbara, and second I thought it had a decreased probability for success. FSPro was showing us that if we didn't hold it, it was going into the front country and could last until we got into the wind event season. We decided to go direct and secure the corner a lot sooner."
Opliger also says that FSPro also showed a weakness in the northwest corner of the fire that had to be dealt with before the fire crept up the Sisquoc and entered new terrain and fuels. The teams repositioned some hotshot crews for mop up and reinforced secondary lines, eliminating the threat. He says that the real strength of FSPro is pointing out the critical points in the fire, allowing managers to position resources more efficiently and effectively.
Like any new application, WFDSS has been a rapidly evolving tool, and its use on the Zaca Fire will likely be marked as a major point in its development. Problems with interpretation have hindered its use over the past two fire seasons, however, the collaborative work between fire scientists and managers on the Zaca and other fires during the 2007 fire season has gone a long way in solving those problems.
Managers have had a hard time interpreting the probability contours; and even if they have gotten past the interpretation barrier, they have struggled with how to use the information. However, the experience on the Zaca spurred the move to tailor some outputs to better suit managers' information needs and to facilitate interpretation.
The 2007 fire season provided many opportunities to explore and refine the models. As of the end of August 2007, WFDSS has been used to support 140 fire incidents, with a total of 910 FSPro analyses, 92 RAVAR analyses. The long duration of many fires this season required updated analyses for each fire as the perimeter expanded, fire suppression restricted the active fire perimeter, and seasonal weather patterns shifted.
According to Mark Finney the adjustments made on the Zaca Fire have already been incorporated into the outputs the WFDSS team in producing for other national fires.
"We are working on it. Now, advanced users are able to download the raw data and do the calculations themselves. We want to make it much more user friendly."
"We have learned a lot about how to not make a system friendly for users. We want to set up a map-based system rather than a strict web-interface. We are talking to Google Earth about creating a system where users can click on weather stations on a map to get data and they can draw in a fire perimeter or proposed barriers and actions."
He says that these developments in the WFDSS system, along with the online availability of LANDFIRE data will mark "a major revolution in how fire behavior analysis is conducted."
The experience of the Zaca Fire demonstrates a window of opportunity to improve the link between science and management. A major concern often expressed in both fire research and fire management circles is that there is a lot of science being produced, but very little that can or is being incorporated (depending on your perspective) into fire management. There may be a current opening to change that state of affairs.
This fire season has shown that fire management is changing at a more rapid pace than ever before. Point protection, AMR, and other non-traditional suppression techniques and strategies have become the norm. Much of this change is driven by necessity, as fire managers have struggled to fight larger and more intense fires over longer fire seasons with fewer resources. But, it is change nonetheless. And in this dynamic environment there is potential to build new more substantial links between science and the field.
Josh McDaniel is the editor of the Advances in Fire Practice, a subsite of the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center Web site focused on bringing efforts and ideas to the forefront that leaders in the fire management, practice and research communities have identified as innovative and widely applicable. It provides access to critical and proven fire information and resources. The new Advances in Fire Practice section can be reached directly by going to http://www.wildfirelessons.net/AFP.aspx?Page=AFPOverview.
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