‘Giga fire’ project aims to map all of California’s wildfire fuels: ‘This kind of information is crucial’
26 November 2022
Published by: https://www.kcra.com
USA – The project is being run by a team of scientists at the University of Nevada at Reno with more than $2 million in grant funding from Cal Fire and the California Air Resources Board.
Wildfire has always been a natural part of California’s ecosystem. But a historical lack of forest management combined with climate change and human activity has contributed to larger and more destructive fires in recent years.
The biggest of those fires are called “giga fires,” which burn at least 1 million acres. Fire officials also recently categorized any fire larger than 100,000 acres as a “megafire.”
In order to prevent the next big fire, Cal Fire is teaming up with the California Air Resources Board and a team of scientists at the University of Nevada at Reno. The goal is to optimize forest management programs through the “Giga Fire Project.”
Jonathan Greenberg is one of the lead researchers on the project at UNR. He said the name “Giga Fire” is a nod to the growing risk of major wildfires as well as the kinds of technology the project utilizes.
“We’re bringing to bear a lot of advanced technologies including advanced modeling, machine learning, remote sensing — we are doing some field data in a ‘big data’ computational environment,” Greenberg said.
All of that big data is being used to make detailed maps of wildfire fuels throughout the state of California. That information is loaded into supercomputers, which use a trained artificial intelligence program to predict how all of those fuels may evolve over the next year, decade and even century.
Erin Hanan is another lead scientist with the Giga Fire project. She said the models they create will allow scientists and land managers to explore a lot of “what ifs” that come up when planning controlled burns and other forest management strategies.
“We know the scale of treatments that are being done now. At what scale do we need to treat in the future and how should resources be allocated in the future in order to deal with the growing climate change problem and the growing wildfire problems,” Hanan said.
Data from the Giga Fire project will be used by Cal Fire and the California Air Resources Board to optimize forest management plans. The two organizations combined to provide more than $2 million in grant funding for the research.
“These grants are all funded by California climate investments. So that means everything is funded by greenhouse gas reduction funds,” said Kevin Welch, a senior environmental scientist with Cal Fire.
Welch says this major investment can also help Cal Fire and other agencies plan to protect air and water quality. His role with Cal Fire involves evaluating the benefits and costs of controlled burns. Ideally, efforts limit the potential for out-of-control wildfires while also preserving important carbon stores like large trees.
“We’re creating a treatment planner to be able to figure out where the best and most effective ways for us to treat the forest is,” Welch said. “We’re also integrating other co-benefits like watershed protection, fire safety, prevention, cultural heritage sites.”
He says striking that balance in controlled burns is critical in changing the future of wildfire season in the West.
“We’re at a pivotal moment of climate, fire and forests here in California, and Cal Fire is trying the best it can to really address those three things together,” Welch said.
