Project Summary
Wildfire danger modeling is an important tool for understanding when and where wildfires will occur, and recent work by our team in the South Central United States has shown wildfire danger models may be improved by incorporating soil moisture information. Advancements in wildfire danger modeling may increase wildfire preparedness, and therefore decrease loss of life, property, and habitat due to wildfire. Still, soil moisture—an important determinant of wildfire risk—is not currently used for wildfire danger assessments because data are generally unavailable at the appropriate scales of space and time.
Our project addressed this knowledge gap by developing and disseminating improved wildfire danger assessments that are rooted in high precision estimates of soil moisture.
Our objectives were to:
- develop an effective model of soil moisture for the Red River and Rio Grande basins using soil maps and climate data;
- quantify the relationships between modeled soil moisture and wildfire danger; and
- distribute soil moisture and wildfire probability maps for both basins.
Outreach
As part of an aggressive outreach program, we convened two soil moisture-wildfire meetings aimed at connecting scientists and stakeholders:
- Soil Moisture and Wildfire Prediction Workshop held in Albuquerque, NM in 2019
- Using Soil Moisture Information to Better Understand and Predict Wildfire Danger: A Symposium for Researchers and Fire Managers held virtually in 2021. This symposium had over 200 registered participants and invited speakers from a dozen universities and governmental organizations, and it led to the development of soil moisture-wildfire working groups aimed at furthering soil moisture-wildfire research and soil moisture-based wildfire danger products.
