Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team

SESSION AT AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION MEETING (AGU) CO-CHAIRED BY DON MCKENZIE

FERA's Don McKenzie, Roger Ottmar, and Ernesto Alvarado attended the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting in San Francisco Dec 10-14. More than 10,000 earth scientists from around the world attend this meeting every year. McKenzie co-chaired a session on the role of climate change, element cycles, and human activities on terrestrial ecosystems. The three FERA scientists then held a kickoff meeting with their collaborators on two NASA-funded projects that will quantify the contributions of emissions from wildfires to the global carbon cycle.

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF FOREST RESEARCH PUBLISHES SCIENTIFIC DOCUMENTION OF FCCS

As this newsletter goes “to press,” four of the seven major papers documenting development of the Fuel Characteristic Classification System are available online in preparation for publication of the December 2007 (volume 37, issue 12) of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research. Stay tuned for an announcement of all seven papers in the next newsletter.

http://pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/rp-ps/journalDetail.jsp?jcode=cjfr&lang=eng

FINAL REPORT ON MULTI-DAY BURN PILOT FOR SMOKE MANAGEMENT

An executive summary and final report provide a summary of the efforts of many contributors to the 2007 spring multi-day pilot burn on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest (Washington) burn project, and identifies the factors that were most useful for making the spring 2007 burning a success.

http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/fera/research/targeted/naches.shtml

FERA COLLABORATES ON NASA PROJECTS TO DEVELOP CARBON EMISSION ESTIMATES FOR NORTH AMERICA

FERA is a collaborator on two projects recently funded by NASA to estimating carbon emissions/budgets for North America. The projects are "Assessing the Impacts of fire and Insect Disturbances on the Terrestrial Carbon Budgets of Forested Areas in Canada, Alaska, and the Western United States", and "Development of Decision Products for Spatial Quantification of Carbon Emissions from Wildfire for North America." The principal investigators for these projects are Dr. Eric Kasischke of the University of Maryland, and Dr. Nancy French of Michigan Tech Research Institute, respectively. Work is underway to develop an efficient approach to both projects. The Fuel Characteristic Classification System and Consume 3.0 are integral to both projects.

http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/fera/research/climate/spatial_carbon_emissions.shtml
http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/fera/research/climate/fire-insect_disturbances.shtml