Rapid Fire Mapping

Wildland fire is an ever present force of nature that has the potential to alter landscapes on a variety of scales. Fire, and the resulting change it can affect has been studied by researchers with interest in wide variety of disciplines ranging from mathematics and physics to landscape ecology. This multidisciplinary approach brings with it a vast array of knowledge that gives insight to issues involving wildland fire. Models have been developed by physicists that can estimate fire behavior properties such as rate of spread and heat output. Models developed by those in the field of landscape ecology that can give insight to tree mortality, carbon sequestration and how a landscape will change as a result of fire one, 10 or 20 years after an area has burned. Our research is focused on estimating the fuel types and loadings essential to fire behavior models using Landsat ETM+ satellite imagery.

Eldorado hot shot working the blaze.

On a national scale, wildland fires threaten human lives, cause millions of dollars of property damage, and are equally expensive to suppress. The ability to rapidly assess fuels and fuel loadings is not just of interest to academics. Fire suppression crews, land managers and government agencies responsible for the protection of forested land have a vested interest in the ability to rapidly assess an areas fuel loading.
This web site and the accompanying research was funded by a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service grant to develop a wildland fire hazard map for the state of Rhode Island. Although the research is specific to the state of Rhode Island, it is our hope that the methodology can be used by researchers and agencies in other areas. Research was conducted at the University of Rhode Island (URI) and the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM).

Please explore this site and send your feedback to Anthony Veltri . This site is constantly updated. The best is yet to come!

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