United States Department of Agriculture / Forest Service

Rocky Mountain Research Station

General Technical Report RMRS-GTR-270

March 2012

A 50-Year 

Dedication to 

Understanding 

Wildlands and Fire

The Missoula 

Fire Sciences 

Laboratory:

Diane M. Smith
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Smith, Diane M. 2012. The Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory: A 50-year 

dedication to understanding wildlands and fire. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRSGTR-270. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, 

Rocky Mountain Research Station. 62 p.

Abstract

In 1960, the USDA Forest Service established the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory 

(now the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory) to find scientific solutions for better 

managing the nation’s wildland resources and to research ways to improve forest 

fire prevention and suppression. This new state-of-the-art research facility did not 

emerge from a vacuum, however. This report explores the tradition of research 

within the Forest Service and how these early research programs, including firerelated research at the Priest River Experimental Forest, contributed to the establishment of the Fire Lab. This history also explores the role played by key events 

in shaping fire-related research.

Keywords: wildland fire research, Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, Northern 

Rocky Mountain Research Station, Forest Service history, forest fire prevention 

and suppression history

All cover photos USDA Forest Service.
Preface

During the initial start-up period of what was then called the Northern Forest Fire 

Laboratory (or “Fire Lab”) in Missoula, Montana, scientists and engineers approached everything from staffing to calibrating new instrumentation to solving 

fundamental questions about fire behavior as engineering problems—that is to 

say, they had a beginning, a middle, and a solution at the end. I approached this 

history of the Fire Lab in a similar fashion, understanding that while research of 

the Fire Lab’s history could continue indefinitely, a “solution” was needed in time 

for the 50th anniversary celebration on September 18, 2010.

Believing that the Fire Lab’s research should be seen in its historical context, I 

first reviewed existing histories of American forestry research in general and fire 

research in particular. C.E. (Mike) Hardy’s study of Harry Gisborne and early fire 

research was particularly helpful in this regard, but secondary sources could take 

me only so far in understanding the Fire Lab’s history and its context. So next I 

turned to primary documents: Forest Service annual reports, correspondence, 

technical papers, and even photographs. I also had the good fortune of being 

able to interview many of the Fire Lab’s earliest researchers who, with their stellar memories, provided insights and details to help me fill in many of the gaps.

I then integrated all of these components and asked several Fire Lab reviewers 

to test my results. Their comments, noting my omissions, misinterpretations, and 

outright mistakes, have been extremely valuable. Indeed, I could not have completed this history without their assistance.

The research conducted at the Fire Lab over the past 50 years has been diverse, 

complex, and multi-dimensional, involving hundreds of scientists, engineers, 

skilled technicians, and support personnel. Researchers have focused on everything from fundamental physics to the effects of fire on ecosystems over time, 

and have examined questions at a variety of scales from the microscopic to satellite images of the earth. Some researchers have looked to the past to understand 

the history of fire, while others have investigated the effects of fire on global 

climate change and, thus, on the long-term future of the planet.

With such a diverse body of research, this report can only briefly summarize 

the achievements of the past 50 years. That said, I hope this history suggests the 

scope of the ground-breaking research conducted at the Missoula Fire Sciences 

Laboratory and introduces some of the men and women who have dedicated 

their professional lives to public service with the goal of better understanding fire 

and its relationship to our nation’s wildlands.

Diane M. Smith, Independent Historian of Science

September 18, 2010

Missoula, Montana

i
Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................1

An Agency Dedicated to Research.............................................................2

Section I: Brief History of the Forest Service and Fire Research ..3

A Planet Shaped By Fire ....................................................................................4

The Greatest Good, for the Greatest Number, in the Long Run.........................5

Establishing the Forest Service ...................................................................5

Remembering the Progressive Era..............................................................6

Changing How the Nation Viewed Wildfires .............................................8

The Gisborne Era of Forest Fire Research ..........................................................9

Understanding Relationships Between Weather and Fire .........................11

Applying Fire Danger Rating in the Field .................................................11

Suppress All Fires by 10 A.M. ..................................................................15

Forest Fire Research: A New Generation .........................................................18

Establishing a Division of Fire Research...................................................19

Seeding Clouds to Prevent Lightning-Caused Fires...................................21

Launching a National Commitment to Science and Research ..................22

Section II: Missoula Fire Lab History .........................................25

Fire Science: A New Beginning........................................................................26

Taking an Interdisciplinary Approach.......................................................26

Laying the Groundwork...........................................................................27

Fire Danger and Fire Behavior.........................................................................28

Engineering a Way to Predict the Behavior of Fire....................................29

Making Mathematics More User Friendly ................................................30

Fueling Fire Models.................................................................................34

Turning Models into Systems...................................................................36

New Tools for Fire Suppression........................................................................37

Scanning the Landscape for Fire ..............................................................40

The Ecology of Fire and Wildlands...................................................................42

Reevaluating the History of Fire...............................................................44

Recalling the Yellowstone Fires of 1988...................................................46

Big Picture: Fire and Fire Effects......................................................................48

Analyzing the Effects of Fire ....................................................................49

Thinking Globally about the Long-Term Effects of Fire .............................50

Looking to the Future ......................................................................................51

People Stop and Pay Attention When He Tells Them to Beware................52

Fire Lab History: Timeline of Key Events.........................................................54

References.......................................................................................................59

ii
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 1

When Forest Service Chief Richard McArdle dedicated the new Northern Forest Fire Laboratory (“Fire Lab”) 

in Missoula, Montana, on September 12, 1960, the Fire Lab 

became an official part of an agency dedicated to finding 

scientific solutions for better managing the nation’s wildland 

resources. With its two wind tunnels and state-of-the-art 

controlled-environment combustion chamber, the Northern 

Forest Fire Laboratory offered an “economical way to bring 

about more effective forest fire prevention and suppression” 

through scientific research (USDA Forest Service 1957).

This new research facility did not emerge from a vacuum, 

however. Rather, the building and its research programs grew 

naturally from programs that began with the establishment 

of the Forest Service in 1905 and the long-standing commitment of Gifford Pinchot, the agency’s first Chief Forester, to 

provide the information needed to make informed decisions 

about how to protect and manage the nation’s forests and 

other wildlands. Pinchot and his successor, Henry Graves, 

set the stage for a long tradition of fulltime fire researchers: 

Harry Gisborne, Jack Barrows, C.E. (Mike) Hardy, Richard 

Rothermel, Frank Albini, Jim Brown, Patricia Andrews; 

Stephen Arno, Robert Mutch, and Robert Burgan. A newer 

generation of researchers followed, including Mark Finney, 

Emily Heyerdahl, Bob Keane, and Wei Min Hao, along with 

many others who have advanced the fundamental understanding of fire science. While over the years the problems 

associated with managing the nation’s forests have grown 

more complex, one question has stayed with the Forest 

Service since Gifford Pinchot first assumed a leadership 

role: How can the nation’s forests and wildlands best be 

managed in relationship to fire?

INTRODUCTION

Physical Science Technician, Robert (Bob) Schuette, watches 

over a test fire in the combustion chamber of the Northern 

Forest Fire Laboratory in 1967 (photo: USDA Forest Service).

The Northern Forest Fire Laboratory is indeed a 

unique structure. There is probably not another 

structure like it in the world. The 35,000 square 

feet of floor space contain scientific research 

facilities designed specifically to investigate a 

wide variety of fire problems. When the laboratory 

is fully equipped, we believe that this will be one 

of the finest research institutions of its kind. This 

whole complex of combustion chambers, wind 

tunnels, radar scopes, and laboratories for physics, chemistry, meteorology, and fuels research 

will constitute a powerful means for making 

progress in the big job of forest protection and 

management (McArdle 1960).

Fire effects publications.
2 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

An Agency Dedicated to Research

Not long after Gifford Pinchot was hired in 1888 to head 

what was then known as the Division of Forestry, he initiated 

a series of research projects. These included studies of North 

American forests, in cooperation with the U.S. Geological 

Survey; a survey of the history of forestry in the United 

States and the “practical application of conservation forest 

treatment ... which is much more frequent than is usually 

supposed”; a study of reforestation after a fire in Colorado; a 

“photographic forest description of the United States”; field 

work on forest fires in several states; and a historical study 

of forest fires “with the purpose of ascertaining the amount 

of damage and the true place of fires in the economy of the 

forest.” For this study, researchers reviewed thousands of 

newspapers and records going back to 1754, and transferred 

data to a classified card index (USDA 1899).

Under Pinchot, the Forest Service also created a series 

of forest experiment stations, opening the first in 1908. 

Within 5 years, six forest research stations were in operation in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho, 

where some of the earliest research into forest fires was conducted. In 1922, Harry Gisborne transferred to Priest River 

Experiment Station in northern Idaho as the first full-time 

fire scientist. His research included investigating the relationship between lightning and fires and how to measure and 

predict weather conditions and other factors that affect fire 

behavior. After World War II, former military personnel also 

worked at the Priest River Station, adapting and testing military techniques and technologies to fight fires.

Regardless of the approaches developed and technologies 

tested, the goal was to put the best minds to work researching 

solutions in the same spirit in which the agency had worked 

under Pinchot. And, like Pinchot, these researchers looked at 

all potential problems facing the nation’s forests and natural 

resources—even the weather—as something that might be 

understood and managed through scientific methods.

This report documents the history of the Northern 

Forest Fire Laboratory, later called the Intermountain Fire 

Sciences Lab, and now known as the Missoula Fire Sciences 

Laboratory, in Missoula, Montana. The first half of the report 

places the Fire Lab within the history of the Forest Service, 

describes the rise of forest research generally, and illustrates 

the importance of fire research within the Forest Service. 

The second half focuses on the history of the Fire Lab itself, 

from its original mission and initial research challenges to 

current projects and educational efforts.

Several themes emerged researching the history of 

the Fire Lab and are threaded throughout the report: 

(1) a commitment to both basic and applied research, 

(2) a dedication to providing management with the information needed to make decisions based on sound science, 

and (3) a recognition of the interaction of historical events, 

public policy, and public opinion that have influenced, and 

continue to influence, fire research.

1. A commitment to both basic and applied research.

Starting in 1908, the Forest Service established a series 

of research programs to study timber management, silviculture, stream flow and erosion. In 1911, the Forest Service 

established the Priest River Experimental Forest in Idaho’s 

northern panhandle. Initially focused on developing better 

methods for harvesting, thinning, planting, and regenerating trees, Priest River researchers soon turned their attention 

to better understanding the causes and effects of fire. When 

Henry (Harry) Gisborne transferred to Priest River in 1922, 

he initiated the Forest Service’s first full-time fire research 

program. When the need for more fundamental, controlled 

research became clear, the agency constructed three regional 

fire research laboratories in the 1960s, including the Fire Lab 

in Missoula.

2. A dedication to providing management with the information needed to make decisions based on sound science.

From the first review of U.S. forest fire history ordered 

by Gifford Pinchot in 1899, to Jack Barrows’ review in 

the late 1950s of 36,000 forest fires and their effects, the 

Forest Service has demonstrated a consistent commitment 

to understanding the challenges facing fire managers. This 

commitment continued with the early educational efforts 

of Richard Rothermel, Frank Albini, Robert Burgan, and 

Patricia Andrews, and the synthesis of literature (known as 

the Fire Effects Information System or FEIS) conducted by 

the FEIS team today. Throughout the last hundred years, 

Forest Service researchers have worked consistently to develop a better understanding of fire and fire behavior, and 

have provided the best available knowledge to managers so 

they could make informed decisions.

3. A recognition of the interaction of historical events, 

public policy, and public opinion that has influenced, and 

continue to influence, fire research.

National events and certain large fires, particularly in 

the Rocky Mountain West, have played a formative role 

in shaping the public’s reaction to forest fires, agency responses, and fire research. From the “Big Blowup” in 1910 

to the Russian launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the 1988 fires 

in Yellowstone National Park, external events have often 

driven investments in research, helped define and prioritize 

research, and accelerated public debate about the role of fires 

in national wildlands.

The Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory was built 

on these foundations. This is the story of the Fire Lab’s 

50-year contributions to the on-going search for understanding of fire behavior and its impacts, especially on 

wildland ecosystems.
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 3

Section I: Brief History of the Forest 

Service and Fire Research

All photos USDA Forest Service
4 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

A Planet Shaped By Fire

Because of their close relationships with fires, western forest ecosystems are considered fire dependent. 

If we hope to sustain the communities of trees, 

plants, and animals that characterize these wildland 

forests, we need to understand the natural role of 

fire, changes brought about by suppressing fire, and 

alternatives for restoring some reasonable semblance 

of the natural fire process (Arno 2002).

Humans have a long history with fire. Native Americans, 

for example, routinely shaped their environment using fire to 

clear undergrowth, enhance habitat for food crops and wildlife, and flush animals from densely forested areas. Early 

European settlers also used fire to clear land and open areas 

for planting, while sheep and cattle ranchers used fire to improve grazing.

Fire does not require human intervention to impact a 

landscape. Lightning-caused fire, particularly in the Rocky 

Mountain West, can sweep across a hillside and transform it 

over night, leaving what appears to be barren ground, devoid 

of life. And yet, as Natives and early Anglo settlers understood, the burned-over landscape generates new growth that 

flourishes from the remains of the fire, growing new grasses, flowers, shrubs, and trees, and creating new habitat for 

wildlife. According to one writer, removing fire from firedependent ecosystems can result in “continents ... covered 

by climax-stage vegetation: a world of great trees, dark and 

silent” (Mann 2005).

The positive environmental role of fire has been understood for centuries, but fire also has the potential to destroy 

property and cultural landmarks and to put lives at risk. As 

historians Stephen J. Pyne and Samuel P. Hays and ecologist 

Stephen Arno have all pointed out, early foresters understood 

the benefits of fire, and yet most political leaders in the early 

twentieth century believed that the risks to life and property were too high to allow any fires to burn. Thus, national 

wildlands were to be protected from all threats, including 

fire. When Theodore Roosevelt signed the legislation creating the Forest Service in 1905, one of the agency’s primary 

goals was to provide complete fire protection to the nation’s 

forests and other wildlands. Looking back with what scientists now know about fire and forest ecology, it is clear this 

policy risked the health of some of the very ecosystems the 

agency sought to protect.

Because fire can be both beneficial and fiercely destructive, wildfires have presented a constant challenge to those 

who manage the nation’s wildlands. Knowledge developed 

through Fire Lab research has contributed to the evolution of 

fire management policy, and the Fire Lab has responded to 

the ever-evolving policy by developing new knowledge and 

tools to help managers meet the challenge.

Fireweed thrives in a stand of lodgepole 

pine burned one year earlier. This 

perennial regenerates from underground 

stems after being top-killed by fire (photo: 

Jim Peaco, National Park Service).

New stands of lodgepole pine flourish 10 years 

after the 1988 fires in Yellowstone (photo: Jim 

Peaco, National Park Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 5

The Greatest Good, for the Greatest 

Number, in the Long Run

They trusted trained professionals, guided by science, 

to make the best decisions. Progressives viewed the 

unregulated destruction of the nation’s forests and 

waterways as an enormous waste and they believed 

that converting the nation’s wealth into vast personal 

fortunes was undemocratic and immoral. Scientific 

management was the answer. Government would 

apply a business-like efficiency to the development 

of resources and guarantee fair and wise use (Lewis 

2006).

In 1890, the American Association for the Advancement 

of Science lobbied the administration of President Benjamin 

Harrison to protect the watersheds in the American West by 

ensuring “the perpetuity of the forest cover on the western 

mountain ranges....” (Lewis 2006). In 1891, legislators attached a rider to the General Land Law Revision Act giving 

the President the power to set aside additional public lands 

“wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, 

whether of commercial value or not, as public reservations....” (Brinkley 2009).

With this legislation in hand, Harrison created the 

Yellowstone Park Timberland Reserve to protect land 

around the southern edge of Yellowstone National Park. 

Before leaving office in 1893, Harrison created 15 forest 

reserves of more than 13 million acres to protect western watersheds. His successor, Grover Cleveland, added 5 million 

more acres but then stopped, seeing “no reason to continue 

[creating reserves] if the government did not also provide 

the means for protecting the forest reserves from unlawful 

entry” (Lewis 2006).

In 1898, the Department of Agriculture appointed 

Gifford Pinchot to head the Division of Forestry, replacing 

the German-born and educated forester, Bernhard Fernow. 

Germany had initiated much of the earliest research in the 

science of forestry, and Fernow benefited from that training. However, as historian Samuel P. Hays noted, Fernow 

believed that the Division of Forestry should dispense information and technical advice based on European principles. 

Fernow had little interest in developing new knowledge 

through forestry research, according to Hays (Hays 1959, 

1975).

Pinchot had been educated at Yale but, because the college did not yet offer training in forestry, he traveled to 

Europe to further his education. When Pinchot succeeded 

Fernow as Chief of the USDA Division of Forestry in 1898, 

Pinchot took a different approach to managing the agency. 

Indeed, to emphasize his scientific training, one of Pinchot’s 

first acts was to assume the new title of “Chief Forester” to 

set himself apart from the other division chiefs, whom he 

viewed as mere administrators (Lewis 2006).

Believing that national forests should be managed for “the 

greatest good of the greatest number in the long run,” the 

new Chief Forester promoted a scientific approach to managing forests. During his first year, he established a “Section 

of Special Investigations, a research arm.” By 1902, this new 

section under Pinchot’s leadership achieved division status 

and had 55 employees (Steen 1976, 2004). Early in his tenure as Chief Forester, Pinchot also established experiment 

stations so that researchers could live and work in the forests 

they studied, test new management strategies on the ground, 

and share results with managers working in similar ecosystems. In his history of the Forest Service’s Intermountain 

Research Station, Richard Klade estimates that “as much as 

25 percent of Pinchot’s early budget [even before the official 

establishment of the Forest Service] was related to research” 

(Klade 2006).

While the early investigations under Pinchot’s leadership may not qualify as fundamental research by today’s 

definitions, they nonetheless laid the foundation for the programs that followed and, in Klade’s assessment, “reflected 

Pinchot’s realization that programs of practical forestry 

could only succeed if supported by sound information obtained through research efforts.” Under Pinchot’s leadership, 

for example, the Santa Rita Range Reserve opened near 

Tucson, Arizona, in 1903, and the first forest experiment station opened in 1908 at Fort Valley, Arizona. By 1913, the 

Forest Service operated six experiment stations in five States 

to conduct research in various ecosystems and areas of interest, from silviculture to erosion control (Klade 2006).

Establishing the Forest Service

Pinchot both created and inspired the modern Forest 

Service. He established a model of efficient agency 

management.... An independent study of the Forest 

Service administration in 1908 paid high tribute to 

Pinchot’s administrative ability. ‘Rarely, if ever,’ have 

we ‘met a body of men where the average intelligence 

was so high, or the loyalty to organization and the 

work so great’ (Robbins 1984).

When Pinchot was first hired as Chief Forester in 1898, 

he worked for the Department of Agriculture, and yet the 

Department of the Interior technically managed the national forest reserves. Pinchot, therefore, had to coordinate his 

agency’s activities with those of Interior. While he managed 

to work within this administrative framework, Pinchot believed he would be more effective if responsibility for the 

nation’s forests were not split between two different agencies. When Pinchot’s personal friend, Theodore Roosevelt, 

ascended to the presidency in 1901 after William McKinley’s 
6 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

assassination, Pinchot began to advocate for an administrative transfer of the national reserves from Interior to 

Agriculture, a move Roosevelt supported. In his first annual 

address (now known as the “State of the Union”) in 1901, 

for example, President Roosevelt put the argument this way:

At present the protection of the forest reserves rests 

with the General Land Office, the mapping and 

description of their timber with the United States 

Geological Survey, and the preparation of plans for 

their conservative use with the Bureau of Forestry, 

which is also charged with the general advancement 

of practical forestry in the United States. These 

various functions should be united in the Bureau 

of Forestry, to which they properly belong. The 

present diffusion of responsibility is bad from every 

standpoint. It prevents that effective co-operation 

between the Government and the men who utilize the 

resources of the reserves, without which the interests 

of both must suffer. The scientific bureaus generally 

should be put under the Department of Agriculture 

(Roosevelt 1901).

Theodore Roosevelt signed this consolidation into law 

on February 1, 1905 and the Transfer Act, as it became 

known, paved the way for the official establishment of the 

Forest Service within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

As historian Stephen J. Pyne has written, “[w]ith control 

over the national forests, forestry now had a political base; 

with Gifford Pinchot, its charismatic chief, it had a leader 

of national stature; and with the invigorated Forest Service, 

the conservation movement had a Progressive Era exemplar of a technocratic bureau serving the public interest” 

(Pyne 1997).

But Pinchot’s commitment to scientific forestry and 

Roosevelt’s willingness to help him achieve his goals 

did not end with the 1905 Transfer Act. Roosevelt’s predecessors had created 41 forest reserves totaling close to 

50 million acres. In his first year as president, Roosevelt 

added 13 new reserves totaling 15,500,000 acres (Hays 

1959, 1975). When Congress tried to stop Roosevelt from 

creating more reserves in six Western States, Roosevelt set 

aside an additional 75,000,000 acres, known as the “midnight reserves,” before the legislation took effect. As noted 

by Timothy Egan in his history of the 1910 fires, Pinchot 

ended up overseeing close to 180 million forested acres 

and, in the process, “introduced a new term to the public 

debate—conservation—and it was here to stay. They had 

shifted oversight of public land from patronage bureaucrats 

to professional foresters.” As Pinchot would note in his diary right after Roosevelt created the midnight reserves: “‘I 

am very happy tonight’” (Egan 2009).

Remembering the Progressive Era

[I]n many ways, the Forest Service was the ultimate 

Progressive government bureaucracy. It was idealistic young people, trained as scientists, bringing 

their scientific knowledge to the forest, to the public 

lands and trying to bring the benefits of those lands 

to the greatest good of the greatest number for the 

longest time—that classic Gifford Pinchot utilitarian 

principle (Cronan 2005).

Historians refer to the period of 1890-1920 as the 

Progressive Era, during which men like Gifford Pinchot 

and Theodore Roosevelt believed that social, economic, 

and environmental problems could and should be solved 

“by experts who would undertake scientific investigations and devise workable solutions.” Thus, when Pinchot 

assumed leadership of the fledgling Forest Service, he 

“infused it with a new spirit of public responsibility,” and 

transformed what had been “a coterie of law clerks into a 

well-trained force fighting for forest protection and more 

scientific forest management” (Hays 1959, 1975).

Like the founders of the National Park Service, Pinchot 

believed in managing the nation’s forests for both current 

needs and future generations. While Pinchot and his successors would struggle with finding the balance between 

the greatest good for the greatest number, Pinchot set a 

mandate from the beginning that the Forest Service’s primary mission was the conservation of the national forests. 

For his purposes, that meant protecting the forests from 

fire.

In one of his first publications for the nascent Forest 

Service, the new Chief Forester described the important role 

played by public wildlands under the new agency’s protection. First and foremost, Pinchot wrote, forests protected 

the nation’s watersheds and needed to be safeguarded to 

ensure the continuation of this critical function. Next, forest and other wildlands supplied grass for grazing animals 

and wood for economic development and growth. While 

Pinchot considered wood production the “least important” 

of these primary functions, he also understood that the production of timber would grow in importance as the country 

itself grew. With these contributions in mind, he wrote that 

the “best way for the Government to promote each of these 

three great uses is to protect the forest reserves from fire.” 

Without this protection, he argued, even the “most skillful 

management is of little effect” (Pinchot 1909).

Pinchot clearly understood the beneficial role fire played 

in preserving forest health. For example, in 1909, he published his Primer of Forestry, Part II Practical Forestry, in 

which he wrote:
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 7

When a tract of woodland is destroyed by fire in 

one of the Rocky Mountain States, it often happens 

that the seeds of the lodgepole pine are scattered 

over it by the wind in prodigious numbers. The 

seeds germinate abundantly, seedlings spring up, 

and in a very few years a young even-aged forest of 

lodgepole pine covers the ground. As it grows older 

fires destroy patches of it here and there, and in time 

every patch is covered again with a younger generation of even age. After many years the forest which 

sprang up after the first fire has become broken into 

a number of even-aged patches without uniformity 

in size or regular gradations in age (Pinchot 1909).

Even though Pinchot understood the role fire plays in 

forest ecology, he still needed to convince skeptical lumbermen that a federal agency dedicated to the nation’s 

forests was in their best interest. To this end, Pinchot conducted detailed inquiries into the impacts of forest fires and 

researched the history of major fires (Hays 1959, 1975). He 

established fire protection as one of the agency’s overarching management goals and primary duties, as indicated in 

the first Use of the National Forest Reserves, Regulations 

and Instructions:

Officers of the Forest Service, especially forest 

rangers, have no duty more important than protecting the reserves from forest fires. During dry 

and dangerous periods all other work should be 

subordinate. Most careful attention should be given 

to the prevention of fires. Methods and equipment 

for fighting them should be brought to the highest 

efficiency. No opportunity should be lost to impress 

the fact that care with small fires is the best way to 

prevent large ones (Pinchot 1905).

The Forest Service’s first “Use Book,” as it became 

known, all foresters were required all foresters to “go to 

and fight every fire he sees or hears of at once, unless he 

clearly can not reach it, or is already fighting another fire.... 

The fact that it may not be on his district has no bearing unless he is certain another ranger is there already.” Once at 

the scene of a fire, rangers were required to stay until they 

extinguished the fire or they were forced to leave to protect their own life. As Pinchot explained no doubt for the 

benefit of his critics, “[t]he burden of adequate protection 

cannot well be borne by the State or by its citizens, much 

as they have to gain, for it requires great outlay of money 

to support a trained and equipped force, as well as to provide a fund to meet emergencies. Only the Government 

can do it, and, since the law does not provide effective 

protection for the public domain only in forest reserves can 

the Government give the help so urgently needed” (Pinchot 

1905).

Conditions on the ground, however, would soon change 

the way the Forest Service viewed its ability to protect the 

nation’s wildlands. While Henry Graves, who succeeded 

Pinchot in 1910, continued to be committed to early detection, fire fighting, and fire prevention, it became clear to 

him that the Forest Service must also focus on research to 

better understand the causes, effects, and behavior of fire.

Conserving the Nation’s Resources

The central thing for which Conservation 

stands is to make this country the best 

possible place to live in, both for us and 

our descendants. It stands against the waste 

of the natural resources which cannot be 

renewed, such as coal and iron; it stands for 

the perpetuation of the resources which can 

be renewed, such as the food-producing soils 

and the forests; and most of all it stands for an 

equal opportunity for every American citizen 

to get his fair share of benefit from these 

resources, both now and hereafter (Gifford 

Pinchot, First Chief Forester, 1910).

Pinchot championed forest conservation and sound 

science until 1910, when he was forced out of office 

for opposing the return of public lands “to the very 

people Roosevelt and Pinchot had battled [against] 

for the past decade” (Egan 2009).

Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot (left 

to right) (photo: USDA Forest Service).
8 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

Changing How the Nation 

Viewed Wildfires

No single event changes history. No fire, however 

awesome, can imprint itself on a continent for 

decades. But a fire can catalyze change that becomes encoded into public sentiment and political 

bureaucracies, and that is what the Great Fires [of 

1910] did. They prompted reforms that affected how 

fire would come and go on tens of millions of acres. 

Protecting the Nation’s Forests from Fire

Forests on critical watersheds should be 

owned by the public for their protective 

value. Public forests serve, also, as centers 

of co-operation with private owners and as 

demonstration areas for the practice of forestry 

as well as furnishing their direct benefits in 

producing wood materials, as recreation 

grounds, etc. (Henry S. Graves 1919).

Hired to fill in when Gifford Pinchot was forced 

from office in 1910, Graves headed the Forest 

Service for 10 years, and established a separate 

branch of research, believing more research was 

needed for the Forest Service to continue to make 

informed decisions. During that time, he continued 

Pinchot’s commitment to scientific research, writing 

that “[c]arefully conducted scientific investigations 

must lay the foundation for all practical woods 

work, and the men who carry on these investigations 

are really guiding the development of forestry. These 

investigations must be not only along lines which 

have always been generally recognized as belonging 

to forestry, but also along such lines as forest 

entomology, pathology, meteorology, and soils” 

(Graves 1912a). He cautioned researchers, however, 

that “[r]esearch results should be presented in terms 

useful to the practicing forester....” (Steen 1976).

Henry S. Graves, 

c. 1890 (photo: 

USDA Forest 

Service).

They brought the Forest Service to a fork in the road 

and forced it to choose one path over another (Pyne 

2001).

The fire season of 1910 forced the relatively new Forest 

Service to reevaluate all that it thought it knew about managing forests and fires. While the actual numbers vary 

depending on the source, the fires that swept through Idaho 

and Montana burned over 3 million acres, killed more than 

80 people—most of them firefighters—and cost the Forest 

Service approximately 1 million dollars to combat. And no 

one saw it coming.

In spite of dry weather, the fire season in 1910 started 

out routinely, with some fires sparked by lightning, others 

started by abandoned campfires and settlers, and still others 

started by trains. Unlike in other summers, the small fires 

of 1910 smoldered but did not go out. “As the weeks wore 

on, the fires crept and swept,” historian Stephen J. Pyne has 

written, merging with one another, while the Forest Service 

“rounded up whatever men it could beg, borrow, or buy and 

shipped them into the backcountry. The crews established 

camps, cut firelines along ridgetops, and backfired. Over 

and again, one refrain after another, the saga continued of 

fires contained, of fires escaping, of new trenches laid down” 

(Pyne 2001). Then came the winds of August 20 and 21, and 

the fires seemed to explode. Elers Koch, then Supervisor of 

the Lolo National Forest, vividly recalled the fires:

For two days the wind blew a gale from the southwest. All along the line, from north of the Canadian 

boundary south to the Salmon, the gale blew. Little 

fires picked up into big ones. Fire lines which had 

been held for days melted away under the fierce blast. 

The sky turned a ghastly yellow, and at four o’clock 

it was black dark ahead of the advancing flames. One 

observer said the air felt electric, as though the whole 

world was ready to go up in spontaneous combustion. 

The heat of the fire and the great masses of flaming 

gas created great whirlwinds which mowed down 

swaths of trees in advance of the flames. In those two 

terrible days many fires swept thirty to fifty miles 

across mountain ranges and rivers (Koch n.d.).

Burning millions of acres throughout the region, the fires 

of 1910 shook the Forest Service’s confidence in its ability to respond to fire. When pressed by the New York Times

about whether or not “human ingenuity, caution, and wealth 

[could] devise some means of making such horrors impossible,” both former Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot and his 

successor, Chief Forester Henry Graves who was in charge 

by the time of the 1910 fires, returned the same answer: 

“No!”
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 9

“This fire,” as reported in the Times, “resulted from an 

unusual combination of circumstances. The main causes 

were the exceptional drought and the high, steady winds that 

prevailed for a long period preceding the outbreak of fire.” 

But, the paper added, thousands of forest fires can be prevented if caught early, and if they are promptly suppressed. 

Unfortunately, even though the Forest Service had pressed 

for more forest rangers and forest guards, the Times article 

continued, “it has usually found Congress stone deaf” (New 

York Times 1910).

In this case, however, Congress heard the message loud 

and clear and responded quickly. They appropriated funds 

for permanent improvements such as roads to increase forest access, support for protective work and fire fighting and, 

“in case of extraordinary emergency,” an appropriation for 

an additional $1,000,000. The Forest Service set out to prioritize how to make the most of this increased funding to 

ensure that “the highest possible state of preparedness might 

be reached and the most effective use made both of the old 

appropriation and of the increased appropriation available 

when the new year should begin” (Graves 1912).

As noted by Forest Service historian Terry West, the 1910 

fires posed a significant challenge to Graves’s leadership, 

but he saw the public outcry as a positive force (West 1992). 

These fires, Graves wrote, exerted “an influence which it 

would be hard to overestimate.” Not only did they catalyze 

the Congressional response, but they also contributed to 

public awareness of fire safety. Graves hoped that this new 

awareness would result in less “carelessness, better laws, 

and more general efforts to combat fires everywhere. The 

Forest Service can well afford to have the community critical of its work,” he continued, “for the sake of the support 

to the general cause of fire protection which this state of the 

public mind gives” (Graves 1912).

Graves’s response to the 1910 fires included initiation of 

a program of scientific research on fire since, if nothing else, 

the expense of firefighting made research important (West 

1992). Taking a systematic, scientific approach, the Forest 

Service also created what it referred to as “fire protection 

plans” for a number of national forests, with the goal of 

eventually creating plans for all forests. As part of the plans, 

foresters identified those areas most at risk of fire and in the 

greatest need of protection (that is to say, with highest timber 

value), and then planned how to locate fire detection and 

reporting systems, such as lookout points and communications protocols, to ensure an efficient response. They also 

considered how to get help to a fire quickly and how to keep 

firefighters supplied wherever they were located (Graves 

1912).

The Gisborne Era of Forest 

Fire Research

The field is so new that we have nothing to help us 

except our own imagination and what little ingenuity 

we possess. I’ve been at this fire research for five 

years now and, while I’m becoming more and more 

convinced that there is nothing revolutionary in 

it, I am also becoming more certain that by better 

Wallace, Idaho after the fires of 1910 (photo: USDA Forest Service).
10 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

knowledge of details we can tighten up in both prevention and suppression very appreciably (Gisborne 

1927).

In 1911, the year after the “Big Burn,” a new Forest 

Service experiment station was established at Priest River in 

the Idaho Panhandle. Four years later, Chief Henry Graves 

consolidated all the agency’s research-related projects into 

the Forest Service Branch of Research to enable scientists 

to focus specifically on research. Then, in 1916, Graves issued a directive to all of the experiment stations to add fire 

research to their work. According to forester C.E. (Mike) 

Hardy, Graves’ “appeal suggested a general program to 

divide the forest areas into climatic units, [to] study meteorological and climatic conditions, fire rate of spread under 

various conditions of weather, fuels (duff moisture was 

mentioned), topography, and cover, and [to] endeavor to predict dangerous conditions.” The following year, the Forest 

Service decided to initiate a project on “the rate of spread of 

fire and its relation to different weather conditions, site conditions, and variations in cover” (Hardy 1977). The agency 

no longer wanted to rely solely on anecdotal and historical understanding of wildland fire. Rather, Graves wanted 

foresters to begin proactively investigating the causes and 

effects of fire under different conditions.

Following Chief Graves’ general instructions, the new 

Priest River director, Julius Larsen, initiated a program in 

1917 to document the moisture in the “duff” (twigs, wood 

debris, etc.) and surface soil at three locations where weather 

conditions were measured. Larsen continued this research in 

1918 and added a study of the relationship of fires to weather 

conditions, gathering data from several new weather stations. 

As promising as this field research appeared, in 1918 Larsen 

already anticipated the need for a research laboratory where 

more rigorous experiments could be initiated. According to 

Hardy, he “realized that some data must come from the laboratory, but was not successful in locating adequate facilities” 

(Hardy 1977). In the meantime, though, Larsen joined with 

another Priest River researcher, W.C. Lowdermilk, in 1920 

to investigate fire hazard in relation to logging slash disposal.

These early research programs helped establish the Priest 

River Experiment Station as one of the nation’s leaders in 

fire-related research (Wellner 1976). As the program grew, 

the scientists argued for increased support for research on 

the causes and behavior of fire, analysis of fire data, and 

even aerial fire control (Hardy 1977). Their calls were answered in the form of a young forester working for the 

Forest Service in Oregon. In the spring of 1922, Harry T. 

Gisborne transferred from the Whitman National Forest in 

Oregon to Missoula, Montana, which served as the Priest 

River headquarters and winter operations office. As the 

first professional forester assigned to fire research fulltime, 

Gisborne established the station’s new research priorities: 

(1) determining and predicting fire danger, and (2) understanding the relation of forest fires to lightning (Wellner 

1976). In particular, Gisborne hoped to use fuel and weather 

conditions to predict fires a few days in advance in order to 

give managers on the ground time to prepare.

Gisborne also began to investigate how to measure the 

moisture of fuels, believing that this was another key to 

predicting fire danger. As his research demonstrated, the 

higher the moisture content in surface fuels (e.g., needles, 

twigs, wood debris, etc.), the less likely a fire will burn 

(Hardy 1977). While he expressed frustration at the number 

of measurements required to correlate fire danger with fire 

behavior, his work began to produce results as well as innovative technologies. One example was the duff hygrometer 

used to measure fuel moisture. This device used “a strand 

of rattan [fiber] enclosed in a perforated metal tube with the 

tip laced just under the top of the duff. The rattan stretched 

or shrunk according the amount of moisture....” The duff 

hygrometer was eventually abandoned because it was difficult to calibrate and use (Hardy 1977), but it initiated a 

series of innovative and relatively inexpensive technologies 

for estimating the moisture in fuels, an 

issue that continues to be addressed in 

the Fire Lab today.

Harry T. Gisborne operating a 

double tripod heliograph, Tip Top 

Lookout, Wenatchee National 

Forest, Washington, 1915 (photo: 

courtesy of the Forest History 

Society, Durham, NC).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 11

Understanding Relationships 

Between Weather and Fire

The 1910 fire, which consumed over three million 

acres and killed seventy-eight firefighters, was an event 

that raised national awareness. Several more moderate 

fire years during the period of 1910–1920, culminating 

in the extreme year of 1919, caused the agency to realize that a deliberate, science-based strategy would be 

needed to both explain and predict fire activity in the 

western USA, hopefully leading to options by which 

the number and size(s) could be reduced (Hardy and 

Hardy 2007).

In the winter of 1923 and into 1924, Gisborne initiated a 

new area of research: predict the approach of lightning storms 

and investigate means to control them. In his own words, 

Gisborne was already on his way to developing “the best system yet devised for predicting the weather.” Expressing his 

frustration with the enormity of the task, however, he wrote: 

“Wanted: better weather forecasts” (Hardy 1977).

While Gisborne pursued these research interests, in 1926 

he also argued that yet more fire research was needed “to 

discover the fundamental causes and effects [of fire] which 

vary in such a way as to cause variable demands on the forest protective organization.” If researchers could determine 

the multiple causes and effects of forest fires, then the Forest 

Service could better assess risk and make more informed decisions about how to allocate resources during both severe and 

normal fire years, while still providing “adequate protection 

during the fire seasons that are less dangerous than the average” (Hardy 1977).

In 1929, Gisborne initiated a review of more than 14,000 

storm observations. According to C.E. (Mike) Hardy, 

Gisborne intended to use the results to improve protection 

from lightning fire by “increased surveillance, knowledge 

of the difference between the fire-starting storm and the safe 

storm, and more accurate 36-hour forecasts of storm occurrence” (Hardy 1977). In 1930, Gisborne added yet another 

research activity: a statistical analysis of fire records to determine the speed and strength of attack needed to successfully 

control a fire in the region (Wellner 1976).

In spite of all this activity—or because of it—Harry 

Gisborne still felt constrained by the lack of adequate research facilities. As early as the 1930s, he began to repeat 

Julius Larsen’s 1918 argument for a research laboratory—a 

facility with an environmentally controlled wind tunnel/forest 

fuel combustion chamber. “In a problem rendered complex by 

so many natural variables it is often the least costly and quickest way to take the problem into the laboratory where each 

factor can be controlled and the results checked by repeated 

trials with several factors held constant,” Gisborne wrote. In 

particular, Gisborne recommended the following:

This laboratory should consist of a wind tunnel at 

least 10 or 12 feet in diameter to accommodate fuels 

of definite moisture content, at any desired slope, wind 

velocity as desired, and the air held at any selected 

temperature and humidity. The effect of ridges and 

canyons on local winds could be determined so that 

forecasts can be made more accurately. This need 

should be given high priority.... (Hardy 1977).

Thus, as Hardy clearly demonstrates in his history of the 

Gisborne Era (1977), the dedication of the Northern Rockies 

Fire Sciences Lab in 1960 completed a dream that had started with Julius Larsen and the hiring of Harry Gisborne in 

the early 1920s. And when the Fire Lab wind tunnels were 

first tested by researchers, they “almost exactly fulfilled the 

requirements Gisborne described in 1931” (Hardy 1977; 

Klade 2006).

Applying Fire Danger Rating in the Field

Gisborne systematically, and often singlehandedly, 

collected information about fire and its endlessly 

varied environment: fuels, winds, slopes, moisture, 

climate, weather. His 27-year effort produced quantities of basic data on fire that proved a gold mine for 

later researchers (Wells 2008).

Harry Gisborne never appeared to be all that interested 

in abstract knowledge. Rather, he saw his research as a direct result of having lived “in the field in daily contact with 

field conditions,” producing results and putting tools into the 

hands of those who had to make decisions in the field (Hardy 

1977). As colleague Chuck Wellner recalled, Gisborne “focused his research on critical problems of fire control. He 

expected involvement and help from forest [managers] and 

they, in turn, expected research results, and they got them” 

(Wellner 1976).

To achieve usable results, predicting fire spread and improving control strategies, Gisborne needed reliable weather 

data, so he turned his attention to establishing a number of 

field measuring stations. According to Jack Barrows, who 

joined the Priest River research team after WWII, Gisborne 

felt that fire danger rating is never going to work unless you 

can have weather stations properly operated and maintained 

and he held to that concept throughout his career. And he 

was right. And he was probably one of the best spokesmen 

for that concept (Barrows 1976).
12 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

The 1934 fire season tested Gisborne’s ideas. Readings 

from the Pete King Ranger Station in Idaho indicated extreme fire weather conditions and the potential for a big fire. 

But when both Gisborne and C.S. Crocker, the acting supervisor of the Selway National Forest, raised the alarm and 

asked for extra firefighters, no additional funds or personnel were forthcoming. Gisborne’s system had yet to prove 

itself, and “agency administrators were not persuaded by 

what they felt was, perhaps, either an error in the local firedanger estimate or an anomaly at a scale too small to warrant 

additional resources.” But the fire danger was indeed high 

that year, and without additional firefighters standing by or 

the resources needed to hire them, the Pete King-McLendon 

Butte fire burned through a quarter of a million acres before 

winter snows suppressed it (Hardy 2007).

In this case, the weather stations and fire danger rating 

system Gisborne and his colleagues had developed were literally tested by fire and proved reliable. And like the 1910 

fire before it, the Pete King-McLendon Butte fire motivated 

the Forest Service to reconsider the way it responded to 

fire danger. As C.E. (Mike) Hardy noted, the reliability of 

Gisborne’s predictions proved to Forest Service managers 

that the need for “pre-suppression” (standby) crews could 

also be anticipated. And it demonstrated the importance of 

better weather data and further research to help predict fire 

danger and behavior nationwide.

Measuring the Potential Danger for Fire

Weather conditions are of major importance in 

determining the probable behavior of fires. The time 

of occurrence and amount of precipitation, wind 

velocity and direction, temperature, relative humidity, 

and the frequency and character of lightning storms 

are all important factors influencing the ignition and 

subsequent rate of spread of fires (Barrows 1951).

A constant challenge facing early fire researchers was 

the lack of affordable technologies capable of measuring 

weather and fuel moisture characteristics needed to accurately predict fire danger in the field. Harry Gisborne, Chuck 

Wellner, and C.E. (Mike) Hardy all worked on developing 

relatively inexpensive technologies and methods that would 

result in accurate readings. One of Gisborne’s particularly 

innovative solutions was the use of an old Pennzoil advertising rotating sign as an anemometer. George Jemison, a 

fire researcher at Priest River, and his wife calibrated the 

rotating sign by driving down a road at a given speed and 

counting the revolutions per minute. Other technologies developed include portable weather instrument shelters and 

even a weather measurement kit that could be carried on a 

firefighter’s belt.

Harry Gisborne uses an early fire danger meter to predict 

forest fire activity in the Kaniksu National Forest in 1937 

(photo: courtesy of the Forest History Society, Durham, NC).

Portable scales, developed by Harry Gisborne and his 

colleagues, were used for weighing ponderosa pine 

moisture indicator sticks in the field (photo: USDA Forest 

Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 13

C.E. (Mike) Hardy and “knock-down” 

weather instrumentation shelter, 1958 

(photo: USDA Forest Service).

The first Belt Weather Kit was developed 

by C.E. (Mike) Hardy (photo: USDA Forest 

Service).
14 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

Rating Fire Danger

[I]f sufficient data were at hand and properly 

compiled, some one factor or some convenient combination of factors might be found that would furnish a 

warning to increase manpower prior to or during fire 

emergencies. This became a major goal of Gisborne’s 

which finally bore fruit with the use of the first fire 

danger rating system on the Pete King-McLendon 

Butte fires of 1934 (Hardy 1977).

Inspired by an early Kodak light meter that adjusted for 

light, exposure time, and lens opening, Gisborne “began 

playing around with various devices to put these factors 

[fuel, wind, and humidity] together and express them into 

a single numerical rating scheme....” He created a device 

similar to a slide rule with “fuel moisture percent categories, 

wind, accumulated days since 0.2 of an inch of rain, visibility in about three categories.” He also added a lightning 

variable. Leaving all the columns and rows blank, he asked 

field managers and other researchers to fill in the blanks on 

a scale from one to six based on their experiences. Once 

Gisborne received all of their estimates, he smoothed out 

the differences, creating what became the first fire danger 

meter, a tool to help foresters better prepare for fire management. As A.A. Brown and Wilfred S. Davis wrote, “If fire 

danger can be measured correctly, much of the effort in fire 

preparedness can be allocated to the right time and place, 

the fire organization can be more effectively built up, and 

surprises can be reduced to a minimum” (Brown and Davis 

1939).

Front (left) and back (right) of Gisborne’s original Model One fire danger meter, 1932 (photo: USDA Forest Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 15

Suppress All Fires by 10 A.M.

The means of fighting forest fires are not everywhere 

the same, for they burn in many different ways; but in 

every case the best time to fight a fire is at the beginning, before it has had time to spread. A delay of even 

a very few minutes may permit a fire that at first could 

easily have been extinguished to gather headway and 

get altogether beyond control (Pinchot 1905).

The easiest way to manage fire, particularly those in the 

“‘back-country’ of the northern Rockies,” was to locate it 

early and put it out quickly. In 1935 the Forest Service instituted what was then referred to as “the quick-action strategy” 

to suppress fires (now known as the 10 a.m. rule or policy) 

(Silcox 1935). While on paper this appears a logical solution to suppressing fires, the ruling presented many logistical 

hurdles, one of which was getting firefighters to the scene of 

a backcountry fire on time. One innovative response to this 

problem came in 1940 after successful experiments during the preceding summer in Washington and Montana: the 

Forest Service began to employ smokejumpers to respond to 

fires in remote areas. Not having to wait for on-the-ground 

access, smokejumpers parachuted into the area near a fire and 

were often able to contain it quickly. The first 10 years of this 

program—1940 to 1949—demonstrated the success of this 

approach to fighting fires in remote areas, with smokejumpers 

parachuting into 1,424 fires over the 10-year period (Watts 

1951). But the 1949 fire season was deadly and provided even 

more incentive for the Forest Service to learn more about fire 

behavior to protect the smokejumpers they sent into the line 

of fire.

On August 5, 1949, a wildfire in the Mann Gulch area of 

the Helena National Forest, Montana, overran a smokejumper crew that had parachuted into a small valley near the fire. 

Thirteen men lost their lives, as the fire “blew up” and swept 

over them (Rothermel 1993). That fall, Harry Gisborne reviewed all available reports on the fire and tried to develop a 

theory of how the blow-up occurred. Wanting to see the site 

first hand before winter and determined to learn what lessons 

could be learned to predict fire behavior and save firefighter 

lives in the future, he set out to explore the Mann Gulch burn. 

On November 9, 1949, while hiking through the burned area 

as part of his investigation, Gisborne had a heart attack and 

died at the site, in essence the 14th casualty of the fire (Hardy 

1977). Gisborne’s death could be viewed as the end of an era 

in fire research but in many ways, it also signaled the beginning of a new one.

Forest Fire Danger Meter type 8-W, 1954: (a) meter, (b) instructions for use (photo: courtesy of the Forest History Society, 

Durham, NC).
16 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

Removing bodies from Mann 

Gulch, August 6, 1949 (photo: 

USDA Forest Service). 

Bodies were removed from the 

site by helicopter and then taken 

by hearse to Helena (photo: 

USDA Forest Service).

Honoring the Fire Fighters at Mann Gulch

In 1949 the Smokejumpers were still so young that 

they referred affectionately to all fires they jumped 

on as ‘ten o’clock fires,’ as if they already had them 

under control before they jumped. They were still 

so young they hadn’t learned to count the odds 

and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy 

(Maclean 1992).

The Mann Gulch fire in Montana’s Helena National 

Forest took the lives of 13 men. Their deaths became national news and, according to Richard Rothermel, the 

Forest Service suffered a severe blow, since it “had not experienced a fatality during a decade of smokejumping and 

was extremely proud of its elite firefighters” (Rothermel 

1993). It also gave fire research proponents additional justification for supporting more rigorous, laboratory-based 

research.

In 1979, author Norman Maclean contacted Richard 

Rothermel and Frank Albini at the Fire Lab to help him better understand the fire’s behavior for a book he was writing 

about the Mann Gulch tragedy. As someone who had fought 

fires himself as a young man, Maclean wanted to know 

how such a thing could happen. While the Mann Gulch fire 

left several fire behavior-related questions unanswered, it 

also left emotional wounds, according to Rothermel. In 

spite of the event’s emotional dimensions—still raw in 

1979—Rothermel felt obligated to use his research “to help 

explain the complicated interactions of fuels, weather, and 

topography” and to help Maclean better understand what 

might have happened that day.

Maclean’s resulting book, Young Men and Fire, published in 1992 after his death, became a popular success, 

but questions still lingered about what had happened to 

the young men trapped by the Mann Gulch fire. Using 

his fire-spread model and other insights into fire behavior, Rothermel addressed some of those questions in his 
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 17

Mike Hardy (left) and Art Brackebusch at the Wildland 

Firefighters Memorial, placed on Looking Glass Mountain 

in Idaho (now Gisborne Mountain) in 1951 (photo: USDA 

Forest Service).

Richard C. Rothermel’s publication, Mann Gulch Fire: A 

Race That Couldn’t Be Won.

Norman Maclean’s book, Young Men and Fire. 

own publication Mann Gulch Fire: A Race That Couldn’t 

be Won (1993). He also described how the fire might have 

spread and why so many young men could not have escaped it.

The Mann Gulch fire led to national support for the kind 

of research later conducted at the Fire Lab in Missoula. 

It is also the only known fire event that resulted in both a 

technical publication and a popular book being published 

around the same time. Both publications relied, at least in 

part, on research conducted at the Fire Lab.
18 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

Forest Fire Research: A New 

Generation

The phenomenal growth of fire research during this 

period from a one-man division (Gisborne) in 1945 to 

a major forest fire laboratory in 1960 was largely the 

doing of one man, Jack S. Barrows (Wellner 1976).

As new technologies became available, researchers and 

fire fighters asked new questions about how to suppress or 

prevent wildland fires. For example, after World War II, when 

the Forest Service had greater access to aircraft and surplus 

military equipment, researchers investigated whether or not 

techniques developed during the war might be put to use for 

fighting fires. Characterizing fire as an old enemy and “hostile 

force” to be battled, they tested the use of aircraft to deliver 

water and fire retardants. They sought to identify the patterns 

and concentrations that could be delivered when flying at various speeds and altitudes, the best design characteristics for 

aerial delivery systems, and the role airplanes and helicopters could and should play in delivery (Pyne 1997). They also 

worked to identify the best retardant for different fuel types 

and conditions, to determine how much retardant is needed 

according to variations in fuels and fire danger, and to predict 

how long the retardant would be effective (Barrows 1976).

In 1946, after being discharged from the Air Force, forester Jack Barrows joined Harry Gisborne at Priest River. 

Prior to WWII, Barrows had worked for the National Park 

Service conducting fire-control training schools throughout 

the United States. Harry Gisborne often taught at the same 

training schools, showing students how to use his fire danger 

rating system. Thus, the two men had a history of working 

together (Barrows 1976).

As the second fulltime fire researcher at Priest River, 

Barrows was soon appointed to an experimental research program based in Missoula, Montana, to test the use of World 

War II bombing techniques to deliver water and retardants 

to forest fires (Barrows 1976). The partnership between the 

Forest Service and the U.S. Air Force resulted in a fire-fighting research program that converted aluminum wing tanks 

into bombs loaded with fire retardants that either exploded 

mid-air or on impact.

The tests ran from the summer of 1946 through 1947 and 

confirmed that “fire retardants could be delivered rather precisely to fire targets by aerial bombing techniques.” However, 

the tests also demonstrated that the bombs failed to adequately 

disperse the retardants. More important for practical application, however, was the conclusion that “aluminum-cased 

retardant bombs were extremely dangerous to personnel on 

the ground.” Thus, researchers were urged to “explore other 

types of containers and cascade delivery systems” (Barrows 

1971).

1944 poster featuring Smokey Bear.

Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires

Smokey the Bear, Smokey the Bear

Prowlin’ and growlin’ and a sniffin’ the air

He can find a fire before it starts to flame

That’s why they call him Smokey

That was how he got his name.

[Chorus from “Smokey the Bear” song written by 

Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins 1952.]

In 1944, members the Cooperative Forest Fire 

Prevention Committee, including representatives 

from the U.S. Forest Service, Association of State 

Foresters, and the Wartime Ad Council created 

the image of Smokey Bear, dressed in dungarees 

and a campaign hat. Smokey became the symbol 

for a forest fire prevention public service ad (PSA) 

campaign. A very successful poster in early 1944 

showed Bambi and his forest friends saying “Please 

Mister, don’t be careless.” Since Walt Disney 

only allowed the use of Bambi for one year, the 

committee developed Smokey Bear as an alternative 

campaign that became equally successful and 

targeted all age groups.

In 1950, a lone bear cub was reported wandering 

near a wildfire in the Capitan Mountains of New 

Mexico. The badly burned cub was later found 

clinging to a tree. A New Mexico Department of 

Game and Fish Ranger sent the injured cub to Santa 

Fe where his burns were treated and bandaged. The 

story of the rescued bear cub became so popular 

with the media that the New Mexico game warden 

offered to turn the bear over to the Forest Service, 

with the understanding that the bear’s life would be 

dedicated to fire prevention and conservation. In 

this role, the bear was sent to the National Zoo in 

Washington, where he became the living symbol of 

a new Smokey Bear fire prevention campaign.
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 19

Jack Barrows officially initiating the B-29 Superfortress program, which tested the use of water bombs for fighting forest 

fires (photo: USDA Forest Service).

With tests of the aerial bombing of fires concluded, 

Barrows’ next assignment picked up the tradition from 

Pinchot’s time, assessing what could be learned from past 

experiences with fires. Barrows analyzed data describing 

36,000 reported forest fires in the northern Rocky Mountains. 

As Barrows recalled, Harry Gisborne helped shape the study 

plan but once they agreed upon a course of action, Gisborne 

left Barrows to pursue the assigned research according to his 

own instincts (Barrows 1976).

Like many fire researchers before and after him, Barrows 

adapted and applied new technology to pursue his research. 

Using relatively new computer technology, Barrows punched 

computer cards to describe each fire. His “ability to quickly 

search for common denominators among the reports allowed 

him to gain insights that were hidden from earlier researchers....” (Bunton 2000). Barrows’s resulting report, “Fire 

Behavior in Northern Rocky Mountain Forests,” published 

in 1951, made a significant contribution to the analysis of 

weather and fire behavior over long periods of time. Barrows 

worked independently on this and other research projects but 

adopted and followed through on Gisborne’s commitment 

to conducting research that was “application oriented.” As 

Barrows recalled, they weren’t “doing research just for the 

love of doing research.” Rather, Barrows and his colleagues 

were “working for the field men” who needed access to research results to do their job (Barrows 1976).

Establishing a Division of Fire Research

The Fire Research Program being carried on by 

the Forest Service is yielding results far beyond 

expectations from the modest sums invested.... [T]his 

program] ... is providing knowledge, techniques and 

equipment for development of more adequate protection of American forests. In addition, the program 

contributes to the general advancement of basic scientific knowledge.... Fire research needs laboratories 

equipped with the facilities required in investigation 

of the difficult technical problems involved in this 

vital work (Mansfield 1958).

In fiscal year 1949, the Forest Service established a 

new Division of Fire Research. Its overarching goal was to 

strengthen the fire-control effort by studying:
20 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

1. Ways and means of preventing fires;

2. Development of improved fire-fighting equipment, methods, and facilities, including control of fires from the air;

3. Physics and chemistry of combustion; and

4. Other matters involved in promoting greater efficiency 

in the prevention and control of forest fires and reducing 

costs and losses (Watts 1949).

As the Mann Gulch fire demonstrated, greater understanding of the fundamentals of fire and fire behavior was 

needed to improve fire management of America’s wildlands. 

It also showed how this knowledge could save firefighters’ 

lives. So in spite of reduced budgets and declining support 

for research during the early 1950s, particularly at the smaller western facilities, fire research continued at Priest River in 

three areas: fire behavior, fire danger rating, and fire control.

Like Jack Barrows, forester C.E. (Mike) Hardy joined the 

Forest Service on a permanent basis after WWII but then 

took time off to pursue a graduate degree. When Hardy returned from Michigan in the spring of 1949 with a Master’s 

degree in forest management, he was soon assigned to the 

fire danger rating system. It was meant to be a 2-year program, Hardy recalled, developing more weather stations and 

continuing the work of Harry Gisborne. As part of his assignment, Hardy visited every ranger station in the region 

and talked to fire lookouts by telephone, helping explain 

how to take accurate weather readings and how the numbers 

they gathered were used for rating fire danger in the region 

(C. E. Hardy, personal communication 2010).

At the same time, even though funding for research continued to be tight throughout the Forest Service, in 1952 

Congress appropriated additional funds to help fight fires. 

With new funding, the Forest Service was authorized to 

build a dormitory, parachute loft, and warehouse for a new 

smokejumper center in Missoula, Montana, replacing the 

early training center at Seeley Lake Ranger Station, the 

Ninemile airfield, and the old Missoula airport that was then 

south of town. This new smokejumper center broke ground 

in an area west of Missoula, next to the new airport. While 

this particular facility was dedicated to mobilizing a quick 

response to wildland fires, it initiated a new Forest Service 

complex that would, a few years later, become home to the 

Fire Lab (McArdle 1953).

In 1953, the USDA announced another series of significant changes, including the reorganization and mergers of 

the Northern Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula 

with the Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment 

Station in Ogden. One of the first decisions managers had to 

make was where to locate Station headquarters. According 

to Laurence Lassen, former Director of the Intermountain 

Research Station, the decision fell to Reed Bailey, who was 

director in Ogden at the time. Bailey was nearing retirement and not in the best of health. He had been scheduled 

to transfer to Berkeley to head the California Forest and 

Range Experiment Station but had decided not to go. He 

also did not want to move to Missoula. Therefore, Bailey 

announced that headquarters would remain in Ogden, 

keeping Missoula as a field office (Lassen 2009). With the 

new organization in place and limited funding available for 

research, fire-related research at Priest River and the winter headquarters in the Federal building in Missoula might 

have inched along without much support, but Jack Barrows 

kept pushing for support for new research and a new facility for conducting it.

The “Forest Service Wing” of the Federal building in Missoula, Montana, corner of Pattee and Pine Streets, 1938. Still 

headquarters for the Forest Service Northern Region, a limited fire research program started by Harry Gisborne was conducted 

in the building’s basement until 1960 (photo: USDA Forest Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 21

While Bailey did not want to relocate to Missoula, he 

still agreed to travel with Jack Barrows in March 1957 to 

Washington, DC, to meet with Montana Representative Lee 

Metcalf and convince him that a centralized fire research lab 

was needed. According to Hardy, Barrows also enlisted the 

Missoula Chamber of Commerce to lobby on the proposed 

project’s behalf (C. E. Hardy, personal communication 

2010). They must have made a convincing argument because on July 8, 1957, Montana Senators Mike Mansfield 

and James Murray introduced Senate Bill 2596 to authorize 

the Secretary of Agriculture to conduct a comprehensive 

program of forest-fire research. House Resolution 8852 was 

introduced by Lee Metcalf on July 22, 1957. Both houses 

of Congress considered the bills, but the outcome seemed 

uncertain until the Russian launch of Sputnik helped influence the decision about this proposed $1 million facility in 

Missoula, Montana.

Seeding Clouds to Prevent 

Lightning-Caused Fires

New knowledge, techniques, and equipment are being 

developed for the suppression and possibly for the 

prevention of lightning fires. This is a very important research program for the West. In the Rocky 

Mountain States, some 70 percent of the forest fires 

are caused by lightning. The research program in this 

field, known as Project Skyfire, offers exciting possibilities for improved forest protection over a vast 

area in the West and interior Alaska (Metcalf 1958).

Lightning starts thousands of wildfires each year in the 

Rocky Mountain West, costing millions of dollars to fight. 

In addition, these lightning-caused fires often occur at elevations of 7,000 feet (or more) above sea level, where limited 

access can hamper fire suppression. Clearly, if researchers 

could better understand the causes of lightning-caused fires 

and either find a way to prevent lightning strikes or defuse 

lightning-causing storms, this could reduce significantly one 

of the West’s major causes of fires. So when Harry Gisborne 

first learned of Vincent Schaefer’s research at General Electric 

using dry ice to seed clouds, he immediately started investigating whether or not this technique could be used to control 

lightning-caused fires.

In early February 1948, Gisborne visited Schaefer at his 

General Electric offices in Schenectady, New York, and invited Schaefer and his family to visit him at Priest River. That 

summer, Schaefer and his family drove out to Idaho where 

“Schaefer, Gisborne, and [Jack] Barrows spent considerable time together ... recording lightning, taking lapse-time 

movies of cloud life cycles, and discussing the theories 

of mountain thunderstorms and means of subduing them” 

(Hardy 1977). The three men also considered and discussed 

different hypotheses about the exact processes that might produce lightning storms.

Don Fuquay, Vincent Schaefer, 

and Jack Barrows (left to right) in 

1956, working on Project Skyfire 

(photo: USDA Forest Service).
22 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

As Schaefer recalled, based on their observations and 

discussions that summer, it appeared that when a large 

cumulus formed on the western side of a ridge it would 

“glaciate,” forming ice crystals that would be “blown from 

the west towards the storms forming over the ridge of the 

mountains.” The three researchers believed that when the 

storm clouds were “seeded” by the ice crystals, big thunderstorms would develop. The discussions among Schaefer, 

Gisborne, and Barrows at Priest River “planted the seed in 

[Shaefer’s] mind for the development of the full blown research endeavor that became Project Skyfire,”1 officially 

launched in 1953, and quickly became one of the cornerstones of Forest Service fire research. “We concluded that 

perhaps it would be possible to change the pattern of glaciations by early seeding operations. If this could be done 

we might change the nature of the charge development pattern” (Schaefer and Hardy 1976).

Following in Gisborne and Hardy’s footsteps, one of 

the project’s first actions was to organize those already 

working in fire detection to gather data. A network of fire 

lookout stations was established, with observers trained in 

specific aspects of meteorology. In 1952, Irving Langmuir 

from General Electric came to Missoula to help organize a 

training school “to keep track of lightning storms through 

the Northern Rocky area and to make cloud surveys of the 

area” (Barrows 1976). Lookouts learned to record when 

and where thunderstorms occurred, how long they lasted, 

and how much lightning they produced, providing a rich 

database that researchers could compare with fire activity 

in the region (Arnold 1964).

After preliminary investigations, the project conducted cloud-seeding experiments in Northern Arizona and 

Montana starting in 1956. These experiments “provided 

some of the basic information for the design of more comprehensive experiments,” according to Jack Barrows, who 

co-directed the research with Schaefer after Gisborne’s 

death. In the summer of 1957, a network of cloud-seeding 

generators was placed along the summit of the Bitterroot 

Range in the Lolo National Forest, and on 24 of the 29 

days the generators were operated, the researchers detected 

cloud modification in the form of ice crystals, which could 

impact the cloud’s electrical activity. Barrows and his colleagues also adapted surplus military radar to detect, track, 

and analyze lightning storms in the region (Barrows 1958).

As the program developed, it became clear to researchers that “basic information was needed before experiments 

in cloud seeding could be designed or the results understood.” Thus, Project Skyfire expanded to include several 

partners, including the U.S. Weather Bureau, Montana State 

University (now the University of Montana), the University 

of Washington, California State Division of Forestry, and 

the National Park Service. The scope of the research also 

broadened to include literature reviews of other cloudseeding experiments and analyses of both thunderstorms 

and lightning fire occurrence in the Northern Rockies 

(Barrows and others 1958).

Launching a National Commitment to 

Science and Research

In the era already referred to as the space age, we 

too must make our mark (Barrows 1958).

When the Russian government sent Sputnik I into 

space in October 1957, it also helped launch a new era 

of science education and research in America. And while 

forestry research wasn’t considered a high national priority at that time, historians now consider the period of the 

late 1950s into the 1970s as the “Golden Era” of Forest 

Service research, resulting in the growth of research programs, laboratory construction, equipment purchases, 

increased staffing, and operating money (Lassen 2009). 

The bills to establish what was then called the Northern 

Forest Fire Laboratory were introduced before the Sputnik 

launch so they cannot be viewed as a direct response to that 

historic event. However, the actual appropriation, months 

after Sputnik made international news, surely benefited in 

part from the push to restore America’s technological preeminence in the world. With bi-partisan support, Congress 

appropriated the necessary funds in 1958 (Klade 2006).

Senator Mike Mansfield, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, 

presented a compelling view of the comprehensive research program to be conducted at the lab. According to 

Mansfield, the new Northern Forest Fire Laboratory would 

investigate (1) factors controlling the start and behavior of 

fires and their interrelations; (2) atmospheric factors that 

lead to fire-causing lightning storms, and potential ways to 

prevent or modify the storms; (3) factors that cause some 

fires to “blow up” and defy efforts of control; (4) improved 

fire control systems, methods and practices; and (5) effective use of fire in land management (Mansfield 1958).

Harry Gisborne, Jack Barrows, and C.E. (Mike) Hardy 

had already initiated many of these programs from their 

offices in the Missoula Federal Building and their field 

research site at Priest River. But as Mansfield explained, 

researchers lacked the state-of-the-art equipment, facilities, 

and personnel to pursue these research projects in depth. 

The new Fire Lab would allow researchers to investigate 

these areas in much greater detail. And, in tune with the 

political climate of the time, he added an extra incentive:

1An audio interview with Jack Barrows from October 21, 1951, 

about Project Skyfire is available at http://archives.cbc.ca/science_

technology/natural_science/topics/849-4927/.
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 23

Northern Forest Fire Research 

Laboratory, Missoula, Montana, 

1961 (photo: USDA Forest 

Service).

Lightning is one of the 

major causes of fire in 

the Rocky Mountain 

West (photo: Fire Science 

Digest [BLM]).

Recent discussions over the hydrogen bomb have 

focused attention on the importance of weather 

control. The program of the Missoula fire research 

group is a perfect example of the very things being stressed. Here is a program in being, already 

producing promising leads in a vital field.... They 

are operating on a shoestring. With a little more 

support, I believe that they will make great contributions to forest protection and to an important field 

of science (Mansfield 1958).

On December 9, 1958, Jack Barrows gave a talk on 

“fire fighting in laboratories” to the Western Forest Fire 

Research Council meeting in San Francisco where he laid 

out his vision for the new facility. “New knowledge is the 

foundation for the progress of our civilization” he said, 

and “future progress in the protection and management 

of western forests rests heavily upon research.” Barrows 

showed slides of a 20,000-acre human-caused fire, marked 

by intense heat, high flammability, and fire in surface fuels 

and in the tree crowns. Barrows used these photos as a 

backdrop to illustrate what drove the kinds of questions 

researchers wanted to answer in the new facility. For example, is it possible to predict the behavior of such a fire, or 

better yet, to prevent it? Once such a fire is underway, what 

are the best mechanical or chemical methods to suppress 

it? (Barrows 1958a).

For the Forest Service and other agencies to be able to 

predict, prevent, and suppress wildfires, they must thoroughly understand the nature of fire, Barrows explained. 

As Gisborne had argued before him, researchers must have 

the ability to isolate individual factors like temperature, 

humidity, and wind, as well as the type of fuel, and study 

them under controlled conditions. It also became clear that 

in order to develop and test electronic methods to detect 

lightning fires, use radar to track lightning storms, and 

create new equipment and techniques to prevent lightning through cloud seeding, the project needed access 

to better research facilities. As both Senator Mansfield 

and Representative Lee Metcalf argued on behalf of the 

proposed Fire Lab, it cost the nation literally millions of 
24 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

dollars to suppress wildland fires. The $1 million requested 

to build a state-of-the-art fire research facility in Missoula, 

if it provided the research needed to suppress even one 

major forest fire, would more than pay for itself. The new 

Northern Forest Fire Laboratory would soon provide researchers with just the kinds of facilities that both Gisborne 

and Barrows had envisioned.
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 25

Section II: Missoula Fire Lab History

Fire fighter photo by Jeff Henry, National Parks Service; all 

others USDA Forest Service.
26 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

Fire Science: A New Beginning

Protecting forests from fire requires marshalling of 

the full technical resources of the nation. These technical resources must stem primarily from a creative 

fire research program that feeds knowledge, ideas, 

and techniques to the fire fighting agencies. The 

Northern Forest Fire Laboratory has been designed 

and built, and will be staffed for this express purpose 

(USDA Forest Service 1960).

With several successful fire research programs already underway in Missoula, and with the full support of the 

Montana Congressional delegation, funding for the Northern 

Forest Fire Research facility was secured through bipartisan 

support in Congress in 1958. The Montana facility was the 

second of three fire-related research facilities that eventually would be supported by the Forest Service: the Southern 

Forest Fire Laboratory, in Macon, Georgia, established in 

1959; the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory, in Missoula, 

opened in 1960; and the Forest Fire Laboratory in Riverside, 

California, dedicated in 1963. The Missoula lab had two 

broad goals: (1) to perform basic and applied research on 

critical wildland fire problems having nationwide application; and (2) to conduct regional research on fire problems 

peculiar to the Intermountain West and Alaska.

The new research facilities dedicated in Missoula on 

September 12, 1960, included a combustion laboratory 

where researchers could control air temperature, atmospheric pressure, and relative humidity and, thus, compare rate of 

spread under various conditions. Two wind tunnels allowed 

researchers to control another variable crucial to understanding fire spread, while the new fuels laboratory enabled 

researchers to measure and analyze fire conditions based on 

the condition of the fuel itself (for example, leaves, needles, 

grass, bark, tree limbs, twigs, etc.). Other new facilities included a physics and chemistry laboratory; a meteorology 

laboratory for tracking weather and fire conditions; and a 

training room, where forest managers could watch research 

taking place in the combustion lab and learn about the science to help inform their decisions in the field (USDA Forest 

Service 1960). Thus, with these new facilities, researchers 

could investigate the causes and behavior of wildland fires 

in new and creative ways while evaluating different variables such as moisture content or wind speed in controlled 

environments. By the time the Fire Lab was ready to open 

its doors, researchers were ready with several questions to 

pursue:

• Could new technology, such as radar, electronic warning 

systems, or heat-sensing devices, rapidly and accurately 

detect fires?

• What conditions resulted in small fires becoming big 

ones, and how do you measure the effects of weather, 

fuels, and topography on fire?

• Is it possible to “fire proof” wildland areas prone to fire 

or develop fire hazard-reduction techniques?

• Once firefighters were on the ground, could research 

make their job easier and safer through new fire suppression techniques and/or the development of new chemical 

agents?

• Could safer or more effective burning techniques be developed for burning logging slash, removing unwanted 

vegetation, or using fire to prepare seed beds? (USDA 

Forest Service 1960)?

Before these research questions could be addressed, however, Jack Barrows needed to fully staff the new facility.

Taking an Interdisciplinary Approach

Before the Lab was dedicated, the employment roster 

showed 15 regular personnel in fire research, including clerical staff. Only three scientific disciplines 

were represented. This was not the type of staffing 

Lab Chief Jack Barrows needed if the organization 

was to develop a fire research program that would 

be [in Barrows’ own words] ‘helping to bring the 

full strength of modern science to American forests’ 

(Klade 2006).

In 1961, the Fire Lab’s first full year of operation, the facility still lacked the personnel necessary to pursue rigorous, 

multi-disciplinary fire research in earnest. Jack Barrows and 

C.E. (Mike) Hardy, for example, were both foresters. Barrows 

recognized that increased understanding of the basics of fire 

behavior would require input from physical scientists and 

Jack Barrows in the new Northern Forest Fire Research 

Laboratory, c. 1960 (photo: USDA Forest Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 27

engineers (Wells 2008), so he looked to the Idaho National 

Engineering Laboratory (INEL) in Idaho Falls, operated by 

General Electric, where a number of scientists and engineers 

were about to be laid off after the cancelation of a nuclear 

airplane program. Although nuclear power and aircraft development might seem far afield for a fire research center, 

many of the researchers working at INEL had the science and 

engineering skills that Barrows and other foresters lacked.

At INEL, Barrows met and later hired physicist Hal 

Anderson, electrical engineer Stanley (Stan) Hirsch, and 

aeronautical engineer Richard (Dick) Rothermel, all of 

whom would soon become leaders at the fledgling research 

lab (Klade 2006). He also hired two skilled INEL electronic 

technicians: Erwin (Erv) Breuer and Merlin Brown. By the 

end of 1961, most of the first generation of researchers had 

been hired and were starting to work in earnest at the new facility, exploring its capabilities and designing tests to further 

knowledge in several areas of fire research.

Wildland fire managers have always understood that many 

factors need to be considered when making fire-fighting 

decisions, and Barrows knew that they usually responded 

based on personal experience and judgment. The new facility offered researchers the opportunity to quantify some of 

these factors, helping field staff supplement their personal 

judgment with science to make more informed decisions, including how to allocate resources. But this was a new facility, 

with no established protocols to follow, so exactly what could 

be accomplished was not clear. As Richard Rothermel recalled, researchers debated two different approaches: “bring 

in box-car loads of fuel from all over the country for burning 

in the wind tunnels,” or “weld the doors shut until a logical 

plan for use of the facilities was developed.” In the end, they 

followed a middle ground, calibrating and experimenting 

with the equipment while working to understand fire spread 

in fuels and adapting concepts of modeling and systems to 

the problems of forest fire prediction (Rothermel 1983).

For example, researchers wanted to know what happens 

when the moisture content of grasses or debris drops below 

a certain level. Do these conditions necessarily result in the 

risk of a catastrophic fire? If so, how can forest managers 

decide when to exercise extreme caution when managing 

a fire in their region? As Edward Cliff, Chief of the Forest 

Service, noted in his 1961 annual report, early research at 

the Fire Lab focused on these and similar questions, while 

the scientists pursued “a better method of predicting the rate 

of spread of forest fires from measurements on model fires” 

(Cliff 1962).

By the end of 1962, lab experiments designed by Hal 

Anderson and Richard Rothermel had tested fire behavior using a full range of moisture content of fuels, and produced 

new insights into fire rate of spread and intensity. According 

to Chief Cliff, this early Fire Lab research suggested that flammability increases slowly until fuel moisture content decreases 

to about 6 percent. “As moisture decreases below this point, 

however, flammability increases more and more abruptly, approaching a virtually explosive burning condition.”

This insight might appear to be an insignificant bit of 

information to add to overall understanding about fire behavior, but it directly impacted how wildland fire managers 

and others assessed fire danger under different field conditions. It had, according to Cliff, “immediate application in 

field practice, red-flagging those occasional days when the 

moisture in [fine] forest fuels drops to 5 percent or below” 

(Cliff 1963). Thus, piece by piece, the new cadre of researchers at the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory added to 

the nation’s understanding of the fundamentals of combustion and wildland fire behavior, building on the commitment 

to research and “management by science” philosophy of 

Gifford Pinchot and the applied research approach developed by Harry Gisborne.

As research continued at the Fire Lab, fundamental 

knowledge about fire behavior accumulated very quickly. But managers in the field still needed what Richard 

Rothermel later referred to as “a consistent method for predicting fire spread and intensity in these fuels” (Rothermel 

1972). Thus, researchers faced an on-going challenge to 

transform the volumes of data they were accumulating into 

a systematic form that field managers could use to make informed decisions quickly and accurately.

Laying the Groundwork

When Hal Anderson and I came to the [N]orthern 

Forest Fire Laboratory in 1961, it was not yet a year 

old and there was a feeling that surely it was going to 

contribute. Just what would be accomplished was not 

entirely clear, but things were going to happen. There 

was also a sense of being overwhelmed, not only by 

all the unknowns of wildfire behavior, but also by how 

to use this brand new facility (Rothermel 1983).

The initial task was to prepare the new equipment to do 

fire experiments. The wind created in the big wind tunnel, 

for example, was quite turbulent, so Richard Rothermel and 

his colleagues experimented with adding layers of window 

screen in the mouth of the tunnel to smooth the flow of air. In 

the combustion lab, Hal Anderson figured out how to weigh 

the fuel bed as it was burning to measure the energy release 

rate—a variable not previously measured successfully. The 

scientists also set up a moisture chamber to precondition the 

fuel and radiometers to measure heat transfer. They measured rate of fire spread, and used thermocouples to measure 

air temperature. In essence, the researchers were learning 

how to measure variables and conduct fire experiments in 

these new facilities, and the results were impressive.
28 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

In 1965, just 5 years after the lab opened and only 4 years 

after they were hired, Anderson and Rothermel presented 

a paper at the International Symposium of the Combustion 

Institute, in Cambridge, England. In it they documented the 

differing effects of environmental conditions on the characteristics of approximately 200 fires burned under controlled 

humidity, air velocity, and fuel moisture.

While their work was empirically based in these early 

years, it also laid the foundation for the more conceptual 

approach that researchers knew would eventually be needed: the characterization of all fires by combustion rate and 

rate of spread with a “general equation that predicts rate of 

spread in any wood fuel ... by incorporating fuel particle 

size and fuel bed compactness with fuel moisture content 

and air velocity.” Rothermel’s fire model was already in its 

formative stages (Anderson and Rothermel 1965).

Fire Danger and Fire Behavior

Even though there are some holes in our information, we have much more than our predecessors. 

Those men had to think of EVERYTHING.... But 

times have changed... While we might like to have 

more, I doubt that anyone ever will be able to sit 

down to a machine, punch a key for every factor of 

the situation, and have the machine tell him what 

to do. Fire control still requires headwork based on 

knowledge. If we will make a purposeful attempt to 

use all of the knowledge and all of the facilities that 

are available to us today we can do one thing the 

old timers could not do: We can come mighty close 

Physicist Hal Anderson in 1962 at the 

Fire Lab’s control center. One of the early 

challenges facing the first generation of 

researchers was learning how to effectively 

use all the new equipment to conduct fire 

experiments (photo: USDA Forest Service).

Richard (Dick) Rothermel (left) and 

Merlin Brown take measurements of air 

conditions in the large wind tunnel at 

the Fire Lab, 1963 (photo: USDA Forest 

Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 29

to getting adequate fire control, and at an operating 

cost far below what it used to be (Gisborne 1948).

Harry Gisborne developed his first fire danger meter in 

1931 with the goal of eventually developing a fire danger 

rating system that could be applied throughout the country. Indeed, as word of Gisborne’s meter spread, it was put 

into use across the United States. However, foresters modified the meter to include what they considered to be their 

own region’s specific needs. For example, in the Southeast, 

the sticks used to gauge fuel moisture were replaced by 

Venetian blind material—“Appalachian slats”—to represent the Southeast’s abundance of fine fuels. While 

adaptations to reflect local conditions increased local 

adoption of Gisborne’s technology, they also diminished 

Gisborne’s ultimate goal of developing a “common language” for fire danger rating. At the 1958 national meeting 

of the American Meteorological Society, as three national fire labs were under development, C.E. (Mike) Hardy 

asked whether or not it was possible to develop a uniform 

fire danger rating system and put it into practice throughout 

the United States (Hardy 1958).

In 1964, the Forest Service transferred Jack Barrows to 

Washington to head the agency’s national fire research program. Now he was in a position to build Harry Gisborne’s 

fire danger rating system—which had become fragmented 

and localized—into a consistent national application. Once 

in Washington, Barrows assembled a research team at 

each of the nation’s fire laboratories—Missoula, Montana; 

Macon, Georgia; and Riverside, California—to develop 

it, and assigned John Deeming to lead a team headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado, to integrate results from 

the three fire labs and implement a National Fire Danger 

Rating System. Having seen the kind of research that could 

be done in the lab’s wind tunnel, Barrows initially assigned 

the Missoula researchers the task of characterizing the effect of wind on fire behavior. But, as Richard Rothermel 

recalled, it quickly became clear that “you cannot separate 

the effect of wind, the effect of moisture, the effect of fuel 

particle size, fuel loading, the slope—all of these things 

interact.”

Based on the success of their earlier work characterizing the effects of fuel moisture on fire behavior, Rothermel 

and physicists Hal Anderson and Bill Frandsen turned their 

attention to characterizing fire behavior generally, initiating a series of experiments. Rothermel began to describe 

the results in a mathematical model that included all of 

these effects. The model (published in 1972) was initially 

developed to serve as the foundation for a new, nationally relevant fire danger rating system as requested by 

Barrows, and it was integrated successfully into that effort 

(Rothermel, personal communication 2010). But the fire 

model soon took on a life of its own.

Engineering a Way to Predict the 

Behavior of Fire

Rothermel and his team completed development of 

the model in a hurry, in response to their superiors’ 

demands for a way to reliably predict fire danger 

over broad landscapes. What it lacks in complexity, 

it makes up in reliability and ease of use. Even today, 

despite widely acknowledged limitations—which 

Rothermel is the first to point out—the Rothermel 

model of fire spread and intensity is still the most 

widely used, and it is a component of many fire management tools now in use (Wells 2008).

Richard Rothermel approached the challenge of defining 

fire danger as an engineering problem, with the idea of finding a quantitative way to describe the essentials of “the fuels, 

the weather, the topography, and something about the fire.” 

By using the burn chamber and wind tunnels to isolate the 

effects of factors such as wind, temperature, humidity, slope, 

and density and porosity of fuel, researchers could reduce 

“the number of trials required and the time needed to analyze 

the results of each” (Cliff 1967). The goal was to put these 

variables into a mathematical model that could be used to 

predict fire intensity, rate of spread, and flame length.

The resulting model reduces wildland fire to “a set of 

equations operating in a hypothetical universe in which fires 

burn only small, uniform, dead fuels on the forest floor” 

(Wells 2008). The Rothermel model does not distinguish 

between lodgepole pine and redwood stands, for example— 

specific fuel models would be developed separately. Instead, 

it describes the physical and chemical processes of fire in 

fundamental terms assuming very basic fuels, based in part 

on fundamental research by Forest Service chemists Ronald 

Susott and Charles Philpot, and fire scientist Robert Mutch.

Rothermel’s model, published in 1972 as A Mathematical 

Model for Predicting Fire Spread in Wildland Fuels, is still 

cited as one of the groundbreaking works in understanding 

fire behavior and the spread of wildland fires (Klade 2006). 

As Rothermel wrote in his introduction, the model offered 

“for the first time a method for making quantitative evaluations of both rate of spread and fire intensity in fuels that 

qualify for the assumptions made on the model. Fuel and 

weather parameters measurable in the field are featured as 

inputs to the model” (Rothermel 1972).

While this model was only the first of many methods developed to predict the behavior of fire in the field, Rothermel 

and his colleagues understood that it was a giant step toward providing the knowledge that might result in a forest 

manager being able to “sit down to a machine [and] punch 

a key for every factor of the situation” as described in 1948 

by Harry Gisborne. And yet, even this significant advance 
30 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

in fundamental understanding of fire behavior would not be 

of much use if fire managers did not understand the model 

or, more to the point, could not apply it when making their 

decisions.

Rothermel completed the fire behavior model before the 

introduction of personal computers. How could wildland 

managers use such a sophisticated mathematical model to 

make informed decisions quickly and accurately? In 1973, 

mechanical engineer Frank Albini joined the Fire Lab and, 

according to Rothermel, “let the genie out of the bottle with 

publication of his book of nomograms” (Rothermel 1983).

Making Mathematics More User Friendly

As the base of knowledge grows, new puzzles will 

emerge, and explanations that were once accepted 

will be challenged as their implications are explored. 

But useful results have been produced from the present level of understanding, and continued research 

should yield substantial rewards in terms of safer, 

more economical control and use of wildland fire 

(Albini 1984).

During his 12-year career at the Fire Lab, Frank Albini 

worked on a number of analytical and experimental research 

projects, investigating the basic processes governing the behavior of wildland fires. His research was highly diverse and 

ranged from investigating the intricacies of flame structure 

to predicting crown fire spread. But it was Albini’s publication of a series of graphs, or “nomograms” as they were 

Fire Lab combustion chamber, 

photographed in the mid-1960s 

(photo: USDA Forest Service).

called, that made application of the Fire Lab’s sophisticated 

modeling capability feasible for managers to use in the field 

to predict fire spread (Albini 1976).

Based on Richard Rothermel’s fire spread model, Albini’s 

nomograms consisted of a set of visual calculating devices 

that could be used in real time to estimate fire spread, intensity, flame length, and difficulty of control. Rather than 

requiring managers to deal with abstract concepts and complex calculations, the nomograms allowed them, whether in 

the office or the field, to read fire spread rate and intensity 

almost as easily as they might read a map. This approach 

proved to be so successful that it continued to be used as 

a training aid and field tool even after the introduction of 

computer programs that would make exact calculations of 

fire behavior characteristics (Andrews 2006).

The nomograms also allowed researchers to teach concepts about fire behavior in new ways to forest and fire 

managers. Rothermel had been an early and strong proponent 

of technology transfer and education. Albini’s nomograms 

took the ability to transfer use of Rothermel’s model to a 

new level because the models could be introduced visually. 

The nomograms illustrated the relationships between variables and, according to Patricia Andrews, “allowed for a 

quick estimation of spread rate, flame length, and intensity 

based on a minimum of information” (Andrews 1986).

The same year Albini published his nomograms, the director of Forest Service training, Ernie Anderson, asked a 

team from the Fire Lab, including Rothermel, to develop 

a 2-week training course at Marana, Arizona, to teach fire 

managers how to use the fire spread model in the field. In 

response to Anderson’s request, Fire Lab scientists took the 
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 31

Frank Albini, 1984. Albini created visual calculating devices 

(“nomograms”) that allowed field personnel to estimate fire 

spread, intensity, flame length and difficulty of control. His 

nomograms were also used for teaching concepts about fire 

behavior (photo: USDA Forest Service).

Patricia (Pat) Andrews 

introduces Frank Albini’s 

nomograms at the 1974 

Tall Timbers Fire Ecology 

Conference in Missoula 

(photo: USDA Forest 

Service).

lead in developing and teaching the course to analysts with 

responsibility for fire suppression (Rothermel 1983).

As Rothermel recalled, participants in the early training 

courses at Marana were encouraging and the classes were a 

success. Indeed, in 1981, the Forest Service formally recognized Rothermel’s contributions to both fire research and 

education, awarding him the prestigious USDA Superior 

Service Award for “outstanding creativity in developing fire 

behavior prediction technology and training programs, enhancing the implementation of the Forest Service’s revised 

fire policy.”

In 1983, Rothermel published a handbook, How to Predict 

the Spread and Intensity of Forest and Range Fires, based on 

material presented at the Marana training center. It included a guide for using the new TI-59, a handheld calculator 

equipped with a pre-programmed chip to run the model, developed by Robert (Bob) Burgan in 1979 (Rothermel 1983). 

By 1986, fire behavior and fire danger rating models were 

made available on the more advanced HP-71b handheld calculator (Klade 2006).

While Fire Lab researchers continued to develop a 

fundamental understanding of the nature of fire and fire 

behavior, they concurrently looked for new technologies 

and other methods to distill and synthesize that understanding into forms that could be used to make decisions in the 

field. This was a relatively new focus for Forest Service researchers. As Rothermel noted, the Forest Service had done 

research for years but researchers normally “shunned” 
32 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

technology transfer (Rothermel 1983). But researchers at 

the Fire Lab made an early commitment to transferring 

fire-related research and new technologies. As this new research was ready for field application, it led to new training 

needs and resulted in new training materials and courses.

Transferring New Knowledge to the Field

The people who take the training usually come in 

with fire experience, so they can use the models to 

make good decisions. Computers have gotten so 

much better and the outputs look so pretty and final, 

it’s a concern to a lot of us that people sometimes 

believe them too much. Trust in the program outputs 

is particularly true for planners, who may not have 

the experience that fire behavior analysts have, but 

they still have to make decisions, and want to use 

these tools to make their decisions (Andrews 2010).

With an advanced degree in mathematics and training 

in computers, Patricia (Pat) Andrews started at the Fire 

Lab as a programmer in 1973, working with physicist Bill 

Frandsen. The Rothermel fire spread model assumes uniform and continuous fuels, so Frandsen developed a way 

to apply the Rothermel model to non-uniform fuels, which 

Andrews programmed. Frandsen’s idea was ahead of its 

time, according to Andrews, limited only by available computer technology.

An example of Frank Albini’s 

nomographs or “nomograms” 

as they were called, a group of 

interconnecting graphs used for 

estimating a fire’s rate of spread, 

fireline intensity, flame length, 

and heat output. Albini developed 

two nomograms (high wind and 

low wind) for each of the 13 fuel 

models associated with Rothermel’s 

fire model. By entering maximum 

slope, wind speed, and fuel 

moisture variables onto the graphs, 

managers can visually calculate fire 

behavior and make informed, realtime decisions about responding 

to the fire (photo: USDA Forest 

Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 33

When Andrews began to program computer-based systems that integrated a number of Fire Lab models, she also 

began teaching at Marana to ensure that fire managers and 

planners could successfully apply them. As she explained, 

training has been an important part of the Fire Lab’s history 

because it provides an excellent venue to get new research 

into application. Training also allows knowledge to flow 

from fire managers to researchers as these scientists have 

opportunities to talk to the people in the field and learn what 

they need. In 1994, her contributions to training and systems development were recognized by the Forest Service, 

which presented her with the Superior Science Award.

Calculating New Applications

We were able to predict behavior at the [Kootenai 

Forest] fire in a couple of minutes... Without it, we 

would have taken a couple of hours to do it manually, or we would have gone back to the station to 

use the computer (Bailey 1979).

In 1973, Bill Frandsen published his work on Rothermel’s 

fire spread model programmed for the Hewlett-Packard 

9820, “one of the early programs that made it possible to 

use the fire spread model with a programmable calculator.” In 1979, building on this work, forester Robert (Bob) 

Burgan developed a program for use with a hand-held 

Texas Instrument model-59 (TI-59) calculator (Burgan 

1979). With a small calculator in hand, managers now had 

a machine they could take into the field that could both 

save time and increase precision over the manual methods 

of the nomograms.

As Burgan and colleague Jack Cohen explained in announcing the launch of the program’s capabilities, the 

calculator’s “high portability, procedural convenience, and 

time savings” allowed fire managers to make faster and 

more accurate fire behavior estimates in fire camp and on 

fire reconnaissance. In addition, the TI-59 program allowed 

users to simultaneously enter information on two different 

fuels “to calculate the combined rate of spread.” By streamlining and simplifying the process, the Texas Instrument 

calculator could also be used for “on-site quantitative fire 

analysis for such activities as prescribed burning, management fires, and escaped fire analysis” (Cohen and Burgan 

1978).

Greening up the Fire Danger Rating System

Starting in 1988, I went from watching fires burn 

at less than a centimeter an hour to working with 

remote sensing which covered kilometers on the 

ground. I went from fundamental scientific observations to watching vegetation change using satellite 

remote sensing, which allows for a lot of artistic and 

intuitive interpretation (Bartlette 2010).

Patricia (Pat) Andrews at a Fire Behavior Analyst training course in 1983 at Marana, Arizona (photo: USDA Forest Service).
34 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

In 1968, forester Roberta (Bobbie) Bartlette worked 

part time at the Fire Lab as a technician. She was only 18. 

When funding for her appointment ran out and she graduated from college, she worked as a fire lookout, led a Forest 

Service crew inventorying surface fuels, and taught high 

school science, before returning to work at the Fire Lab 

fulltime as a technician in 1976.

In 1981, Bartlette and physicist Ralph Wilson worked 

on a field study of West Texas grasses and other fuels. On 

that research trip, Texas Tech graduate students encouraged 

Bartlette to pursue a graduate degree based on the work 

she was doing. She soon entered the master’s program in 

the University of Montana’s School of Forestry, with a 

focus on fire science. As part of her studies, Bartlette began investigating research creating a greenness index and 

determining the relationship of vegetation greenness to fire 

danger, a problem that Bob Burgan was also working on. 

For her graduate research, Bartlette established field plots 

to determine how vegetation greenness and the moisture 

content in these test grasslands changed through the season, could be monitored using satellite imagery, and could 

then be used to improve fire behavior predictions.

Burgan and Bartlette developed greenness ratings using 

satellite imagery and maps for the National Fire Danger 

Rating System. As the technology improved, they created 

entire color-coded maps of fire danger in the United States, 

which they made available on the Internet. To help managers use this new approach to understanding fire danger, 

Bartlette joined Patricia Andrews as one of the few women 

teaching at the Marana, Arizona, training center at the time.

Fueling Fire Models

Creating fuel models requires good science and good 

judgment. You input fuel characteristics into the fire 

model and see what it predicts. Then you do that for 

a lot of different vegetation types, which results in 

a blueprint of fire behavior by vegetation type. And 

then you have to make judgments. Is this realistic? 

Does the prediction for the grass confirm what your 

knowledge and research say are true? Then you do 

some fine tuning, adjusting the inputs to the model so 

that the fire behavior appears realistic relative to the 

other vegetation types (Brown 2010).

Roberta (Bobbie) Bartlette prepares fuel samples in 1969 

for testing. Bartlette started part time at the Fire Lab in 

1966 when she was still a student and eventually became a 

fulltime forester (photo: USDA Forest Service).

Robert (Bob) Burgan 

(on right) with Richard 

Rothermel and Patricia 

Andrews at a “BEHAVE 

in the Wilderness!” 

symposium and workshop 

on wilderness fire, held 

in Missoula, Montana 

1985 (photo: USDA Forest 

Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 35

When estimating potential fire behavior, managers need to 

determine the type and characteristics of the fuel present. For 

example, grassland fuels burn differently than woody fuels, 

so those distinctions need to be made when determining fire 

behavior. According to Jim Brown, who developed some of 

the original fuel models used for calculating fire danger and 

predicting fire behavior, distinctions also exist within major 

fuel types; eastern grasslands, for instance, tend to have a lot 

more fuel than western grasslands, so behavior of grassland 

fires can be quite different in the two regions. The same is true 

of forest fuels, where different kinds of wood produce more 

or less heat, and burn faster or slower than others. Building on 

experience in the field and research in the lab, fuel modelers 

describe the physical characteristics and spatial distribution 

of grasses, brush, timber, and slash in mathematical terms; 

this quantitative description of fuel properties relevant to fire 

spread is known as a fuel model. Fuel models are needed as 

input for fire models, just as fuel itself is needed to feed a real 

fire (Brown, personal communication 2010).

The 1964 Fire Lab contributions to the National Fire 

Danger Rating System (NFDRS), for example, relied on fuel 

moisture, weather forecasts and two inputs for fuel types—

one for grasses and one for woody conditions. As part of 

the fire danger rating effort initiated by Barrows, Rothermel 

completed his fire behavior model in 1972. It had two main 

components: one on the intensity of fire and the other on the 

rate of spread. To calculate these values, it required a number of inputs including fuel load (or quantity), depth, particle 

size, moisture, and wind, which resulted in an estimate of 

fire behavior burning near the ground (i.e., not crown fires 

or large fuels) (Rothermel, personal communication 2010).

As research forester Jim Brown explained it, fuel models needed to relate to fuel characteristics recognizable by 

managers in the field (such as pine needle litter or shrubs), 

and depended on the experiences and insights of researchers to make them realistic representations of conditions on 

the ground (Brown, personal communication 2010). Brown 

helped develop a set of eleven fire behavior fuel models that 

were published with Rothermel’s fire spread model in 1972. 

When Frank Albini developed his nomograms, he expanded 

the original set to thirteen fuel models. In 1982, Hal Anderson 

prepared a publication using photographs to describe these 

models for use in the field.

The fire danger rating team took Rothermel’s 1972 fire 

model, which weighted fuels by surface area, and changed 

it to weight fuels by load (or quantity), thus, giving greater 

emphasis to larger fuels to reflect seasonal changes in fire 

danger. To this end, they developed a set of nine fire danger 

fuel models. When the National Fire Danger Rating System 

was updated in 1978, the number of fire danger fuel models 

grew to 20. (These 20 fuel models were unique to NFDRS 

and should not be confused with the 13 fuel models developed for fire behavior.)

Fuel assessment can also help managers in the field describe the amount of dead material on the forest floor and 

evaluate its fire hazard. Such information can be used to 

plan for fire prevention, fire suppression, and prescribed 

fires. Like Gisborne before them, Fire Lab scientists understood that the methods for assessing fuels must be easy 

to apply. In 1981, Bill Fischer addressed this problem by 

producing three handbooks with photographs to illustrate 

vegetation with a description of the fuel in terms of size 

Example of a photo from 

one of William Fischer’s 

three photo guides for 

appraising woody fuels in 

Montana, designed to help 

managers quickly assess 

downed fuel to plan fire 

management strategies 

including fire prevention 

and prescribed fire. The 

photo guides also included 

a fire potential rating with 

each photo (photo: USDA 

Forest Service).
36 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

distribution and quantity (Fischer 1981a,b,c). In particular, 

each fuel condition photographed included a “fire potential rating,” one of the most important contributions of this 

series. Fischer’s photo guides were the first of a series of 

publications that tied photos of fuel conditions (for example, trees, shrubs, grasses, etc.) to quantitative descriptions 

of their fuel properties and potential fire behavior.

Initially produced at the Fire Lab by Fischer, other 

photo-based field guides for fuels have since been produced 

by scientists nationally. For example, the Pacific Northwest 

Research Station has produced an entire series of stereo 

photo guides of fuel conditions throughout the United States. 

The more recent field guides by Fire Lab researcher Bob 

Keane and his team (Sikkink and others 2009) continue in 

this tradition.

Turning Models into Systems

It’s important to clarify the difference between models 

and systems. A model is like Rothermel’s fire spread 

model which consists of equations. There are also 

models for spotting distance and for fuel moisture. 

A system takes many mathematical models and puts 

them together into some kind of a package that fire 

managers can use. BehavePlus is the system I developed. It uses Rothermel’s model and maybe 45 other 

models (Andrews 2010).

With the growth of knowledge about fire and fire behavior, 

and the development of so many different models characterizing these insights, managers in the field needed a way to 

use the models in an integrated form. New computer technology was becoming available to help scientists meet this need. 

Returning from a fire training session in Marana in 1976, 

Richard Rothermel suggested that Patricia Andrews create a 

system to automate Albini’s nomograms and the tables taught 

in the Fire Behavior Officer course, and to include options 

that were too tedious to use with manual methods. Within a 

year, Andrews had the basics of the BEHAVE system in place 

and introduced it to her colleagues (Andrews, personal communication 2010).

Although designed specifically as an interactive system for 

practitioners, the initial BEHAVE system had to be run on a 

computer at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab in California. Thus, 

during its development, researchers at the Fire Lab could 

run the program, but it wasn’t easily accessible to people in 

the field. By 1984, field access to more powerful computers 

had improved, so the system was officially transferred into 

use nationwide. As part of the technology transfer process, 

Andrews, Robert Burgan, and Richard Rothermel developed 

a BEHAVE course that they taught six times around the 

country, using a train-the-trainer approach (Andrews 2007).

BEHAVE quickly proved how valuable predictive tools 

developed by Fire Lab researchers could be to decision makers in the field. In the summer of 1984, fire managers used 

BEHAVE to predict the spread of a fire in the Gates of the 

Mountains Wilderness near Helena, Montana—the same 

area where the Mann Gulch fire had tragically surprised and 

killed 13 fire fighters. BEHAVE calculations indicated that 

further spread was unlikely under predicted weather conditions. Based on these projections, managers decided to use 

minimal suppression on the fire, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. As Richard Klade noted in his history of 

the Intermountain Research Station, these savings more than 

paid for development of the program (Klade 2006). Since 

that time, better computers, better access to data (for example, fuel, weather, topography), and additional research 

models have led to new and improved systems. The redesigned BehavePlus fire modeling system replaced BEHAVE 

in 2001, and Version 5 of BehavePlus was released in 2010 

(http://www.firemodels.org/index.php/behaveplussoftware/

behaveplus-downloads).

New technology facilitated research innovation again 

in 1993, when research forester Mark Finney, a Fire Lab 

contractor at the time, developed the FARSITE fire area 

simulator. FARSITE uses the improved graphical capabilities of computers to model and display fire growth across 

the landscape under changing weather conditions. The system can be used to predict the growth of on-going fires and 

assist with planning (for example, to explore “what-if” questions). In keeping with the Fire Lab’s technology transfer 

tradition, once FARSITE was available for widespread release, Finney and others developed a course for the NWCG 

fire behavior training program. Finney continues to develop more advanced fire modeling systems, including Fire 

Spread Probability (FSPro), a program used to support decision making on large, complex fires, and the Wildland Fire 

Decision Support System (WFDSS). This system integrates 

multiple Fire Lab models into an easy-to-use, more intuitive, 

and responsive system to assist fire managers and analysts in 

making strategic and tactical decisions for fire incidents. Its 

web-based application makes it easier for fire managers to 

document their decision-making process, and share analyses 

and reports with other fire managers. In another key advance, 

it introduces economic principles into the fire-decision 

process.

Since the late 1970s, researchers at the Fire Lab have 

made models available in systems for all aspects of wildland 

fire management (for example, prescribed fire planning, fire 

suppression, budget planning). Models of fire behavior, fire 

effects, and ecosystem dynamics are packaged into systems 

that can help researchers and practitioners visualize changes 

in vegetation over hundreds of years. This kind of modeling 

can play an important role in studying relationships between 

wildland fire and climate change.
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 37

New Tools for Fire Suppression

The thunder of giant airtankers taking off from western bases to drop retardant on hotspots or in front 

of advancing wildfires became a normal part of fire 

control efforts by the 1970s. Research by Fire Lab 

scientists in the suppression unit was an important 

part of making this form of aerial attack efficient 

and effective (Klade 2006).

While Fire Lab researchers pursued a better understanding of fire behavior, fire danger, and fuels, others initiated 

new and innovative research that used the Fire Lab’s stateof-the-art facilities along with field studies to improve 

fire-retardant use and delivery. As Richard Rothermel 

recalled, the common retardant in the 1960s contained borate, which was found to be toxic to plants. Several new 

fire retardants had been introduced to the market, but little was known about which ones were the most effective. 

Rothermel, C.E. (Mike) Hardy, Charles (Chuck) George 

and others at the Fire Lab, including David Blakely, Cecelia 

(Ceci) Johnson, Greg Johnson and later Shirley Zilstra, 

working with researchers in California and Oregon, were 

assigned to use the Fire Lab’s burn chamber to test retardants under controlled conditions of temperature, relative 

humidity, and fuel moisture. Retardants that showed promise were then tested in the wind tunnel, where wind speed 

was added to the other controlled variables. This research 

continues to guide many of the decisions made regarding 

aerial-applied retardants throughout the world.

In 1971, Jack Barrows presented a paper on retardant 

research at a symposium on the use of air operations to 

fight fire. According to Barrows, these experiments helped 

researchers better understand fire retardant effectiveness 

under various environmental and fuel conditions, and 

recommend different kinds of retardants for different fire 

conditions. Barrows noted that under “the more severe 

burning conditions with low humidity and moderate wind 

conditions long-term retardants are generally superior. The 

long-term retardants provide the greatest reduction in rate 

of fire spread after both one hour and three hours elapsed 

time following application” (Barrows 1971).

That same year, when Rothermel returned after a year 

at Colorado State University with a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering, he wanted to return to researching 

fire behavior. But Rothermel had also trained as an aeronautical engineer, and interest had been growing nationally 

in applying military technologies to civilian applications. 

So upon his return, Barrows initially assigned Rothermel 

to work with Hardy and George on writing proposals to develop and test innovative tank-and-gating systems for fire 

Collaborating for the Best Results

[T]he fire problem on national forests is 

probably not for solution by the Forest 

Service alone .... THE MAJOR NEED AND 

OPPORTUNITY is for a new, truly national 

concept followed by coordination of effort by 

many agencies (Gisborne 1941).

As Jack Barrows recognized when hiring Fire Lab 

personnel, to be successful wildfire research requires 

the skills and talents of many different people with 

diverse backgrounds and expertise. This commitment 

to collaboration and working with those who can 

bring a unique perspective to the research question 

continues to this day. For example, for more than 30 

years, researchers at the Fire Lab have collaborated 

with scientists, programmers, and other personnel 

at Systems for Environmental Management (SEM), 

a private, non-profit research corporation, founded 

in Missoula, Montana, in 1977. Some of the earliest 

cooperative projects between the Fire Lab and SEM 

included climatology and fuel analysis studies.

Since that time, SEM staff have conducted further 

research for the Fire Lab on fuels and fire danger 

rating, participated in fire effects studies, designed 

databases, and written programs for many of the 

Fire Lab’s computer applications. In fact, all of the 

Fire Lab systems accepted as operational, national, 

interagency fire management systems as of 2010 

were developed in partnership with SEM:

• BehavePlus fire modeling system

• FlamMap fire mapping and analysis system

• FARSITE fire area simulator

• FOFEM first order fire effects model

• FireFamilyPlus historical analysis of fire danger 

and fire weather system

• WFAS, Wildland Fire Assessment System, webbased fire danger and fire weather system

• Citation Retrieval System, literature database for 

the Fire Effects Information System
38 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

retardant airplanes. Rothermel continued to interact with 

the researchers and the funders as needed, but once the 

project was underway, he returned to his work on fire behavior, while George continued testing fire retardants and 

delivery methods from the air.

As George later wrote, fire responders did not have access to good data on retardants or retardant application 

techniques, so instead they relied on “trial and error, experience and assessing what agencies preferred” (George 

and Fuchs 1991). With the goals of quantifying the application of retardants and improving drop efficiency and 

safety, George and his colleagues tested innovative “tank 

and gating system design, the properties of the fire retardant, and the relation between these two” with the goal of 

assuring “selection of the best aerial attack systems and 

to optimize their performance”(George 1975). George then 

translated these and other results into a simple slide calculator, reminiscent of Harry Gisborne’s early fire danger 

rating meter, in which he integrated relationships between 

retardant volume, drop height, air speed, and aircraft type. 

Like other research at the Fire Lab, new knowledge about 

fire retardants was being packaged and delivered to managers as soon as possible after its development.

In 1966, Charles (Chuck) George worked on tests to screen and evaluate fire retardants (photo: USDA Forest Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 39

Researchers used cups on the ground to test retardant coverage from aerial drops, starting in the mid-1960s 

(photo: USDA Forest Service).

Hand-held “computers” 

developed by Fire Lab 

researchers allowed 

pilots to quickly 

determine optimum 

coverage based on 

retardant volume, drop 

height, air speed, and 

aircraft type (photo: 

USDA Forest Service).
40 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

Scanning the Landscape for Fire

In 1964, [Stanley] Hirsch listed the attributes of 

an ideal fire monitoring remote sensing system: 

(1) detection of fire in its early stages; (2) effective 

operation day and night; and (3) ability to prioritize 

fires, distinguishing between dangerous fires and 

those of no significant consequence. Hirsch noted 

that the most important characteristic of a firemapping remote sensing system was the ability to 

detect fire size and location in relation to ground 

features (topography) and forest resources (vegetation and fuel).... Functionally, all the information 

must be communicated to fire management personnel 

for timely fire management decisions. Although these 

data timing issues were raised over 30 years ago, 

they are just beginning to be addressed by the fire 

suppression agencies (Ambrosia and others 1998).

In addition to developing successful fire retardants and 

methods to suppress fires, researchers also sought ways 

to locate fires as soon as possible after ignition. With the 

goal of extinguishing all fires by 10 a.m. the day after they 

were detected, fire managers needed better tools to identify 

fires early. As Stanley (Stan) Hirsch explained, forest fires 

“spread slowly immediately after ignition” and during 

that period can be easily suppressed (Hirsch 1971). If fire 

managers could detect small fires even before they became 

visible to fire lookouts, then it would be easier, faster, and 

safer to respond to them, regardless of their location.

Thus, while one group of researchers measured and 

tested fuels in the new wind tunnel and controlled-burn 

chamber, others at the Fire Lab adapted and applied emerging technologies to reveal burning materials in the field: 

on the ground in remote locations, at night, and even in 

dense smoke, when traditional lookouts and other reporting systems might miss them (Cliff 1963). When electrical 

engineer Stan Hirsch first came to the Fire Lab from INEL 

in 1961, he began exploring his interests in infrared (IR) 

imagery within C.E. (Mike) Hardy’s group. As Hardy recalled, it was clear that Hirsch’s idea had great potential, so 

the Fire Lab soon spun it off into its own research program 

to investigate ways to locate and map fires when regular 

surveillance from lookout stations was impractical or impossible because of fire location, environmental conditions, 

or time of day. Hirsch worked with physicist Ralph Wilson, 

research forester Nonan Noste, and engineer Forrest 

Madden to apply this technology in research that became 

known as Project Fire Scan.

Stanley Hirsch (right) and pilot Stan Butryn of Project Fire Scan (photo: USDA Forest Service). 
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 41

The idea, Hirsch later reported, was to use infrared scanners to detect fire “day or night and under conditions when 

smoke or other atmospheric pollutants prohibit visual detection.” He also wanted to use infrared to “map the perimeter 

of large forest fires, determine the relative intensity along 

various portions of the fire front, detect spot fires outside of 

the main front, and determine the size and extent of unburned 

areas within the fire perimeter.” With this information, fire 

managers could determine if a fire threatened a ranch or town, 

for example, or they could use the information to map escape 

routes for firefighters and people living near a fire. As Hirsch 

recalled, the goal was to be able to do these things from the air 

“without exposing personnel to the hazards of ground scouting in dangerous fire situations” (Hirsch 1971).

In the fall of 1962, Hirsch and his research team mapped 

a 300-acre controlled burn where a temperature inversion had 

trapped a layer of smoke 2,000 ft. deep in the valley. Despite 

these obstacles, according to the annual report from the Chief 

of the Forest Service, the infrared image could “see” through 

the smoke, indicating that the technology had potential for 

identifying and mapping fires. Further testing came in 1963, 

when researchers used infrared mapping on three wildfires 

to identify the perimeter, find hot spots, and locate spot fires 

outside the main fire perimeter, then relayed that information 

to the managers on the ground (Cliff 1964). Early research 

Physicist Ralph Wilson was instrumental in developing 

methods for using infrared systems to detect fires 

(photo: USDA Forest Service).

programs in infrared surveillance had been conducted with 

military aircraft and pilots but, as Richard Klade noted in his 

history of the Intermountain Station, the resulting “Forest 

Service systems, the only ones in the world known to be 

designed and developed specifically for fire detection and 

mapping, were products of the creativity and hard work of 

Hirsch, Wilson, and other individuals” (Klade 2006).

Just as new technology was incorporated in the structure 

of the Fire Lab to answer questions about fire behavior, new 

technology was developed to answer the monitoring and 

mapping questions raised by Hirsch and his colleagues. At 

first, the researchers borrowed an infrared scanner, which 

they modified to meet the requirements of their study. Then 

in 1964, the Office of Civil Defense negotiated a contract to 

manufacture the first Fire Mapping Infrared Line Scanner 

for the Forest Service, which they delivered in 1965 (http://

www.nifc.gov/NIICD/infrared/infrared.html).

During the fire seasons of 1963, 1964, and 1966, researchers worked at night and/or under heavy smoke cover to test 

the infrared system’s ability to detect and map 38 forest fires 

and obtain information on the fire perimeter, the relative intensity of the fire, and spot fire locations. Fires ranging in 

size from 10 to over 200,000 acres were mapped by the scanner and photographed using Polaroid cameras. The photos 

taken from the scanner were either dropped directly into a 

fire camp that night from the aircraft or delivered to the fire 

camp from a landing area by vehicle. Thus, long before satellites provided instant communications in remote locations, 

Fire Lab scientists were using the best technology available 

to deliver information to managers within minutes to hours 

of an infrared flight. With this information, fire managers 

could identify the most critical areas of the fire, plan for 

safety zones or evacuations, locate spot fires needing attention, and prioritize areas for control the next morning (Cliff 

1968). With the potential to scan 3,000 square miles per hour 

from the air compared with 600 square miles using traditional visual surveillance, the Fire Scan program was transferred 

into the Forest Service’s fire protection program in 1966, 

even though testing continued.

While developing the capability to map fires using 

infrared technology, Project Fire Scan researchers also 

worked on identifying fires so small that they might be 

missed initially by lookouts and other on-the-ground detection systems. To address this problem, Ralph Wilson, 

Nonan Noste, and Forrest Madden combined the sophisticated technology of aerial detection with a very simple 

technology. They made artificial “fire targets” that closely 

mimicked the heat released from a small fire, using 14-inch 

buckets filled with sand and topped with burning charcoal. 

Planes equipped with infrared viewers patrolled areas near 

Missoula and other mountainous areas with different forest 

types looking for—and finding— the targets (Wilson and 

Noste 1966).
42 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

A 2-month follow-up test of an 8,000 square mile area 

adjacent to Missoula demonstrated that researchers had refined their ability to detect fires using infrared technology. 

In the summer of 1970, the Fire Scan program successfully 

mapped more than 200 wildfires, 45 of which were detected before they were reported by lookouts and other patrol 

aircraft. However, the technology had limitations. While 

the IR systems picked up some fires so small they were 

actually campfires, in other instances they missed wildfires detected visually. As Hirsch noted, “[u]ntil we learn 

more about the relationship between heat output and smoke 

output from latent fires we cannot determine the relative effectiveness of visual and IR systems” (Hirsch 1971).

Hirsch expressed confidence that “IR used in combination with visual detection will result in a more efficient 

system than visual [detection] alone.” According to Richard 

Rothermel, field personnel never fully implemented 

Fire Scan’s fire detection capabilities, in part because of 

the limitations of real-time communication (Rothermel, 

personal communication 2010). Nevertheless, the fire mapping capabilities proved to be highly successful and two 

IR-equipped planes are still dispatched from Boise, Idaho, 

as part of the National Interagency Fire Center’s National 

Infrared Operation (NIROPS) unit.

The Ecology of Fire and Wildlands

The Wilderness Act of 1964 called for managing wilderness areas for their natural qualities ... but one of the 

most unnatural acts we’d been committing in the wild all 

these years was suppression of fire (Mutch 2009).

Gifford Pinchot and many of his contemporaries understood the beneficial role fire has played in maintaining the 

health of the nation’s forests. These ecological benefits include the creation of wildlife habitat, increased availability 

of soil nutrients, improved growth of old-growth trees, and 

the regeneration of forests. In addition, naturally occurring 

fire can improve long-term watershed and environmental 

conditions, create more resilient ecosystems, and even protect forests from more intense fires in the future (Cones and 

Keller 2008).

Widespread settlement of forested areas in the late 19th

and early 20th centuries, coupled with the post-1910 commitment to firefighting upon which Forest Service policy 

was based, left many forests, particularly in the Rocky 

Mountain West and the Southeast, without regular fires. 

Ironically, this left some forests more at risk for severe fires 

and possibly more vulnerable to disease and insect infestations than they would have been with more frequent fires. 

With more and more people choosing to live and work in 

or near the edges of public wildlands, managers were under 

increased pressure to find ways to better protect the health 

of a forest without putting lives at risk or threatening property or national landmarks.

This situation challenged fire managers to find a balance between human safety and infrastructure protection 

and the overall health of the forests. Fire Lab scientist 

Robert (Bob) Mutch and David Aldrich, a forester for the 

Bitterroot National Forest, began to investigate how to allow fire to play its natural role in the nation’s wildlands, 

particularly those newly designated as wilderness by the 

Wilderness Act of 1964. As part of a study initiated in 1970, 

the two men tested a new approach to fire management in 

a 100-square-mile area in the White Cap Creek drainage in 

Using a bucket and charcoal, research forester Nonan 

Noste prepares a spot fire for testing aerial infrared 

detection systems in 1962 (photo: USDA Forest Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 43

Idaho chosen for its remoteness, diverse topography, and 

varied forest types. As Mutch recalled, they spent a year 

“sampling vegetation, collecting evidence of fire history, 

studying records of past fires, and charting the effects of 

fire exclusion” (Wells 2009).

Aldrich and Mutch divided the test area into ecological 

zones, with different fire prescriptions and management options written for each zone. While this new approach to fire 

management needed to provide fire managers with guidelines on how to handle different types of fires within the 

test area, they also had to ensure public safety and prevent 

major adverse effects outside the management area (Klade 

2006). In the summer of 1972, their plan for the White Cap 

area was ready and, after a briefing in Washington, DC, 

Forest Service Chief John McGuire approved it.

Three weeks after the plan was signed, the new approach, which Mutch described as “this radical idea of 

letting nature do its thing,” was put to the test. In the summer of 1972, a small fire was spotted in Bad Luck Creek 

within the study area and was allowed to burn. That fire put 

itself out after 4 days, burning less than one quarter of an 

acre. The following year, a fire in the Fritz Creek drainage 

burned about 1,600 acres, “more than had been burned by 

all the previous fires of record in the [White Cap] drainage” (Wells 2009). When the fire moved beyond the test 

area, fire fighters suppressed it. Even though the fire attracted some negative media attention, intimating that “the 

shift from fire management meant Smokey Bear was laying 

down his shovel,” researchers documented positive effects 

of the fire on vegetation and wildlife, and the first major test 

of the new policy was deemed a success (McGuire 1975).

Based in part on innovative programs such as the one 

conducted by Mutch and Aldrich, Assistant Secretary of 

Agriculture M. Rupert Cutler announced a major shift in 

Forest Service policy in 1978. In the future, he said, “some 

forest fires which start on National Forest System lands 

will be used for predetermined beneficial purposes rather 

than being put out immediately” (Carle 2002). Although 

application of this new policy in the field proved challenging, this announcement ended both the 10 a.m. rule and, in 

effect, the legacy of the 1910 fires.

Fire management pioneers in 2002, 30 years after the White Cap study was approved: Bob Mutch 

(left) with Bill Worf, Bud Moore, Orville Daniels, Dave Aldrich, and Doris Milner (President of the 

Montana Wilderness Association when the White Cap plan was approved). Forest Service regional 

directors Worf and Moore initiated the White Cap research project and enlisted the support of 

Daniels, who was then the Supervisor of the Bitterroot National Forest. They then assigned Mutch 

and Aldrich to conduct the study (photo: Robert Mutch).
44 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

Reevaluating the History of Fire

Concepts of forestry were developed in moist regions 

of Europe for the purpose of reestablishing trees on 

land deforested centuries earlier. Early European 

foresters considered fire entirely a destructive force 

introduced by humans. We now know that most North 

American forests as well as ancient forests in Europe 

were shaped over thousands of years by distinctive 

patterns of fire (Arno 2005).

With a new policy in place to allow fire to resume its natural role in shaping some of the nation’s forests, managers 

needed guidelines to make informed decisions about where 

fire should be allowed to burn and under what conditions. 

To contribute to this understanding and help provide these 

guidelines, ecologist Stephen (Steve) Arno initiated a study 

to better understand the frequency, intensity, and influence of 

fire on different forest types in the Rocky Mountain West. In 

a study of forested areas of the Bitterroot National Forest, for 

example, Arno and others looked for evidence of past fires 

by documenting fire scars on living trees, and then analyzing the role fire played in forest development before fires in 

the West began to be aggressively suppressed (Klade 2006). 

Arno gradually expanded this study into locations outside 

the Bitterroot, concluding that lightning-caused and humanstarted fires were a major agent of change throughout the 

northern Rocky Mountain forests.

As he dug deeper into the fire histories of forests throughout the West, it became clear to Arno that these wildlands 

needed fire to survive. “Forests are processes, not just trees 

and plants,” Arno noted. “And these forests can’t survive and 

remain healthy without processes such as fire.” Comparing 

nature to the workings of a clock, he compared removing fire 

from a forest to removing a gear from the clock. “Of course, 

you can’t remove the gear and expect the clock to work, yet 

people expect nature to work without fire,” he said (Stilling 

2005).

As Arno’s work documented, when fires are routinely 

suppressed in forests that historically saw frequent fire, they 

become dense with shade-tolerant species and wildlife lose 

critical habitat. Keeping fire out of wildlands can also result 

in health-related problems for trees and other plants, such as 

insect infestations and disease epidemics, as well as increased 

potential for severe fires in these forests.

As the evidence continued to grow about the critical role 

fire plays in forest ecology, the Forest Service continued to reconsider its policy regarding fire. Perhaps most telling, by the 

late 1970s the Division of Fire Control had become the new 

Division of Fire Management. Although on the surface this 

may seem to be simply a bureaucratic move, Richard Klade 

points out that the “implications of this name change were 

huge,” suggesting for the first time that fire should not just be 

controlled, but it should also be managed for the well-being of 

the forests themselves (Klade 2006). And then came the fire 

season of 1988, and everything researchers thought they knew 

about fires and fire behavior was put to the test.

Letting Fires Burn

Understanding fire ecology principles is absolutely 

essential in developing appropriate fire management 

strategies for fire-dependent ecosystems in wilderness. 

Knowledge of the continental pattern of fire regimes 

will equip us to plan wilderness fire management 

Bob Mutch and Dave 

Aldrich (left to right) 

hiking the White Cap 

drainage in 1970 (photo: 

Bud Moore, BLM)
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 45

programs that take into account fire history, fire regime 

elements, and fire effects (Mutch 1995).

With the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, the 

National Park Service and the Forest Service began to look 

for ways to allow areas designated as wilderness to continue 

“untrammeled by man” and without interference or “active” 

management. To this end, in the late 1960s, the Northern 

Region designated a remote area of the Bitterroot National 

Forest as a test site for allowing fire to burn naturally within its 

borders under specific conditions. Fire Lab researcher Robert 

(Bob) Mutch and forester Dave Aldrich, who worked for the 

national forests, were chosen to lead the project.

The two men spent a year documenting the diverse vegetation types and the history of fire in the test area. Drawing 

on research at the Fire Lab to help determine likely rates of 

spread in the test area, they presented a plan in 1972 to the 

Chief of the Forest Service, who approved it without reservation. While a fire did escape the test area that following 

summer, Mutch recalled that because they had a concise 

plan in place and they followed it, Forest Service management was satisfied with the results. Indeed, several other 

national forests followed their lead and established policies 

to allow fire to resume its natural place throughout the nation’s wildlands.

In 2006, Mutch received the Harold Biswell Lifetime 

Achievement Award from the Association for Fire Ecology, 

in part for his 1970 article in Ecology that argues that 

“fire-dependent plant communities burn more readily than 

non-fire-dependent communities because natural selection 

Steve Arno (right) 

and forester Clint 

Carlson explain how 

a ponderosa pine 

fire scar reveals a 

300-year history 

of frequent surface 

fires that helped 

maintain open 

park-like ponderosa 

pine forests with a 

grassy understory 

(photo: USDA Forest 

Service).

has favored development of characteristics that make them 

more flammable” and for his leadership in developing the 

1972 White Cap Fire Management Plan in the SelwayBitterroot Wilderness.

Thinking Ecologically

Once we started looking at ecologically based 

management, with habitat types and other tools for 

looking at the ecology of forests in the 1970s, then 

more and more field foresters and foresters at all 

levels were saying we should not just be managing 

these forests as if they were plantations and tree 

farms (Arno 2010).

After completing a PhD in forest ecology from the 

University of Montana in the early 1970s, Stephen (Steve) 

Arno first worked on a ranger district for a few months 

and then for the Forestry Sciences Lab in Missoula, inventorying habitat types of Montana forests. As part of that 

assignment, he tracked the fire history of each stand. As 

he recalled, more than 70 percent of all the forests he and 

his colleagues sampled—from ponderosa pine to cedar and 

hemlock—showed evidence of previous fires, and yet these 

stands also showed signs of trees having survived the fires.

Because of his interest, Arno was assigned to work part 

time with Bob Mutch, Bill Fischer, and others on the effects of fire, before eventually transferring to the Fire Lab 

fulltime. The more research he conducted in the field, the 

more Arno came to appreciate the positive and complex 
46 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

role fire played in the ecosystems of the northern Rocky 

Mountains. For example, fires would kill the more firesusceptible species with thin bark and few adaptations to 

fire, whereas fire-resistant trees like ponderosa pines would 

survive. Indeed, these species actually need fire to maintain 

a presence—as do the wildlife that rely on the habitat that 

fires help maintain. Thus, it became clear that by removing fire, land managers were in fact harming the very lands 

they were attempting to protect.

In 2004, Arno received the Harold Biswell Lifetime 

Achievement Award from the Association for Fire Ecology 

in part for his pioneering research on fire history that resulted in major advances in knowledge of the role of fire in 

the northern Rocky Mountains and his work advocating for 

restoration of fire-adapted ecosystems.

Recalling the Yellowstone Fires of 1988

June 14, 1988: A small fire starts on Storm Creek, 

just north of Yellowstone National Park. . . . The 

Storm Creek Fire and many other fires would keep 

burning in Yellowstone until cool, wet weather 

arrived in the fall. Now legendary, the ‘Summer 

of Fire’ brought people, science, and wild nature 

together like never before or since (National Park 

Service 2008).

In 1988, fires in Yellowstone National Park burned close 

to a million acres and put at risk some of the nation’s most 

beloved cultural treasures. While Yellowstone did not lose 

any of its historic buildings to fire, the high winds and low 

humidity led to a much more severe and faster-moving fire 

than experts predicted, pushing fire policy, fire spread models, and even public relations to or beyond their capacity. 

No model existed for predicting the behavior of winddriven crown fires.

In July of that year, when Yellowstone managers had 

already made the decision not to suppress some lightningcaused fires in the Park, Richard Rothermel, Bob Burgan, 

Roberta Bartlette and others from the Fire Lab in Missoula 

traveled to Yellowstone as part of a team to predict a 

worst-case scenario for the spread of fire. But as soon as 

the researchers had predictions in hand, the fire exceeded 

them. As Rothermel later explained, “we couldn’t come 

up with a worst-case scenario because ... the winds came 

again and again and again, and the worst case happened 

almost weekly.... It was an amazing season,” he recalled. 

“Nobody had seen this combination of weather and fires 

before” (Wells 2008).

Like the fires of 1910, the hot, wind-driven fires that 

raged through the Yellowstone ecosystem in 1988 captured the nation’s attention. Stories about the fire ran on the 

front pages of newspapers and were covered on network 

news, initiating an often passionate debate about the role 

fire plays in the health and wellbeing of the nation’s wildlands. The Yellowstone fires climaxed with a “blow up” on 

August 20, 1988—incidentally, the same day of the Big 

Blow Up of 1910—displaying fire behavior unexpected 

even by seasoned fire managers and scientists. The fires 

were carried by strong winds from stand to stand, spotted 

profusely, and could not be stopped by roads, waterways, 

or miles of fireline.

While these extreme conditions are indeed rare, or 

“worst case,” Rothermel realized that he needed to “expand his model so that managers on the ground could better 

predict the risks associated with these kinds of extreme fire 

conditions....” Determined to produce such a predictive 

tool before he retired, Rothermel turned his attention back 

to research (Klade 2006).

To effectively predict and prepare for crown fires, two 

questions needed to be answered, according to Rothermel:

• Under what conditions is a crown fire likely to occur?

• What is the expected size and intensity of an anticipated crown fire?

Forest Service and other researchers outside the Fire Lab 

recently had addressed the first question, so Rothermel set 

to work on the second (Rothermel 1991).

In this case, however, the Fire Lab’s research facilities 

were of limited use, since Rothermel could not reproduce 

crown-fire conditions in the burn chamber or wind tunnels. 

So like Gifford Pinchot, Harry Gisborne, and Jack Barrows 

before him, Rothermel turned instead to the historical record, gathering and analyzing data from the records of 

extreme fires in the region. He also had access to a wealth 

of existing studies by Fire Lab researchers. For example, 

Jim Brown and other researchers at the Fire Lab had been 

investigating ways to describe the fuels and fire behavior 

potential of tree crowns. And just the year before, in 1987, 

Rothermel himself had completed a study of why, during 

especially dry years, tree crowns are at particular risk of 

burning. He drew on all of these data as the basis for modeling crown fire behavior.

In 1991, Rothermel published a new model for predicting the behavior and size of crown fires in the Northern 

Rocky Mountains, producing it as a workbook that decision 

makers could use in the field to “rapidly assess probable 

behavior from on-site observations without the aid of a 

computer.” Building on Frank Albini’s work and his own 

experiences in the classroom, Rothermel introduced the 

model using nomograms. These graphical representations 

for decision makers were based on five moisture conditions in the field: early spring before greenup, late spring 

or early summer after greenup, a normal dry summer, summer drought, and late summer severe drought (Rothermel 
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 47

The Yellowstone Fires of 1988 led to new research questions about how to predict crown fires, particularly 

under extreme weather conditions. (photos: Jeff Henry, National Park Service).

1991). Rothermel’s model, along with theories of crown 

fires developed in Canada, still forms the basis for many 

crown fire behavior systems in use today (Alexander and 

others 2006). Having met this final professional goal, 

Rothermel retired from the Fire Lab in 1994, 33 years after 

he first came to Missoula from Idaho Falls.
48 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

Big Picture: Fire and Fire Effects

The Fire Effects Information System works on synthesizing research nationwide. Many of our scientists 

and professionals also produce excellent synthesis 

work. In addition, the Fire Lab is committed to 

regional and national training, in both the classroom 

and developing national curricula. We believe our 

investment in training and outreach is higher than 

anywhere else in the country (C. C. Hardy 2010).

As fire science and forest and fire management policy 

evolved, forest managers needed access to information that 

summarized the best of this knowledge in forms that are accessible and usable in the field. Richard Rothermel, Frank 

Albini, Patricia Andrews, Bob Burgan, Mark Finney, and 

others at the Fire Lab focused on distilling new fire behavior 

knowledge into numeric and graphical representations. They 

produced handbooks and eventually computer programs and 

technologies to transfer the latest understanding of fire science into user-friendly and field-applicable guides.

Researchers working on the effects of fire have taken a 

different approach. In 1977, for example, Stephen Arno, as 

part of a small team led by Robert Pfister, collaborated with 

national forest scientists in Montana to produce a handbook 

of forest habitat types in the state. Forester Bill Fischer initiated several publications describing fire ecology based on 

habitat types of various parts of the northern Rockies and 

Great Basin. These researchers understood that forest managers need consistent descriptions of plant communities 

and their relationships with fire if they are to communicate 

across disciplines and make informed management decisions, including how and when to use prescribed fire or 

allow naturally occurring fires.

In 1985, before widespread availability of the Internet, 

Fire Lab researchers Jim Brown, Bill Fischer, and Pete 

Taylor conceived of a Fire Effects Information System to 

Reviewing the Literature

Fire Effects Information System is Born

The real challenge is getting the information 

to managers in an easy fashion so they 

aren’t overwhelmed. A lot of our fire effects 

information work was done trying to make 

all this technical knowledge available to 

managers in a way that is relevant to their 

job and easy to obtain. This involved a 

combination of summarizing the knowledge 

like the Fire Effects Information System and 

developing models (Brown 2010).

Jim Brown joined the Fire Lab in 1965 as he was 

completing a doctorate in forestry. As an expert 

on the quantification of fuels, Brown focused on 

developing fuel models and other methods for 

predicting and inventorying fuels. For the White 

Cap test area and eventually other national forests 

preparing fire management plans, he trained crews 

to inventory fuels so they could determine fire 

potential. He also developed a method to estimate 

tree crown fuel, which was used as part of Richard 

Rothermel’s model for crown fire behavior.

After working in fuels for the first half of his career, 

in the 1980s Brown joined the Fire Lab’s fire effects 

research team, investigating the effect of fire on 

aspen stands. As he worked with Stephen Arno, 

Bill Fischer and others on the effects of fire, Brown 

and his colleagues realized that a wealth of new 

knowledge about fire effects was available to land 

managers. The problem was that they needed to 

sort through stacks of studies before they could use 

the knowledge to make informed decisions. With 

this in mind, the Fire Lab established a Fire Effects 

Information System to review, evaluate, and then 

synthesize the best of the literature so that managers 

didn’t have to locate the information and analyze 

it on their own. This program continues to this day, 

covering more than 1,000 species and including a 

library of more than 60,000 documents.

In 1993, Chief Dale Roberson presented Jim 

Brown with the Forest Service’s Superior Science 

Award for “numerous contributions to wildland fire 

management and modern forest policy.”

Jim Brown gathering fuel samples in the 

spring of 1972. Brown has been referred to 

as “the foremost wildland fuels person in 

the United States, and probably the world” 

(photo: USDA Forest Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 49

provide literature reviews through an interactive computer 

program operating on the Forest Service’s computer network for use by in-house managers and practitioners. They 

initially proposed covering the basic biology and fire ecology of species in the Great Basin, but after the fire season of 

1988, their vision expanded to include species throughout 

the continental United States. By 1995, when the expanded 

database became available “online” and easily accessible 

by the public as well as managers, it contained literature 

reviews covering more than 1,000 species. In addition to 

concise overviews of the literature, this work also resulted in 

a national resource of approximately 60,000 carefully keyworded articles. Ecologist and FEIS manager Jane Kapler 

Smith believes the Fire Lab FEIS library is the best literature 

collection on basic ecology relating to fire and fire effects in 

the world (Smith, personal communication 2010).

The FEIS ecologists and writers have synthesized the 

literature on nearly 1,200 species. However, their work is 

not over. With growing concerns about invasive species as 

well as global climate change, new research continues to be 

added to the wealth of knowledge that practitioners in the 

field need. The FEIS synthesizers continue to review new 

research as it becomes available and revisit older species reviews to ensure they provide state-of-the-art information to 

managers.

Analyzing the Effects of Fire

We will not have adequate fire management until all 

activities of a fire organization—including prevention, control, and beneficial uses of fire—are directed 

by land management objectives. Because it cuts 

across so many resource management boundaries 

and affects both short-term and long-term resource 

outputs, the only effective way to deal with fire is 

on a multi-resource, multi-objective basis. Further, 

because fire does not respect property boundaries, 

planning must consider the objectives of all landowners involved (Lotan 1979).

Conducting fire research in the field poses a constant challenge to researchers, with so many variables—from weather 

to fuels—difficult to measure and control. In 1966, Fire Lab 

Communicating to Professionals and the Public

Fire is such a charismatic issue, that it’s 

possible to draw people in and teach them 

about science. We’ve reached out to two 

or three thousand children over the last ten 

years, teaching them that science is a process 

of creative and critical thinking. If we’ve 

enhanced their understanding of science even 

a little bit then it has all been worthwhile 

(Smith 2010).

In the mid-1970s, Jane Kapler (later Kapler Smith) 

entered the Fire Lab for the first time to meet 

with Bob Mutch. As a temporary employee of 

the National Park Service, she had written an 

environmental assessment of the historical role of 

fire in Glacier National Park and related ecosystems, 

and now she was looking for advice. As she walked 

down the hall looking for Bob Mutch’s office, she 

read the names on the office doors: Andrews, Arno, 

Brown, Burgan, Rothermel, and Mutch. “They 

were the names straight from my bibliography,” she 

recalled.

After several more visits to the Fire Lab to meet 

with researchers and attend seminars, she knew her 

career path was set. But she also knew she would 

need a graduate degree in forest ecology to follow 

it, so she left Montana to attend Colorado State 

University to research the effects of fire on aspen 

groves.

When she returned to Missoula in 1991, Kapler 

Smith soon found herself back at the Fire Lab, 

writing reports—first on the fire ecology of the 

habitats of Northern Idaho as a contractor and then, 

in 1994, working for the Fire Effects Information 

System (FEIS). As she recalls, she inherited a vision 

that was ahead of its time. Now as the leader of 

FEIS, she and her colleagues continue to build on 

that vision as more and more land managers need 

access to quality information to make informed 

decisions based on the ecological effects of fire.

Jane Kapler Smith (kneeling right) explains the effects of 

fire to three generations of visitors during an open house at 

the Fire Lab in 2004. Although the Fire Lab was established 

to conduct research, education and training for both 

professionals and the general public have been an integral 

part of Lab activities almost from the very beginning (photo: 

USDA Forest Service).
50 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

researchers William Beaufait, C.E. (Mike) Hardy, William 

Fischer, and others set out to test the effects of burning and 

silvicultural treatments on forests dominated by spruce, fir, 

and larch. This effort became known as the Miller CreekNewman Ridge project. The scientists measured how fire 

affected air quality, vegetation development, conifer regeneration, water quality, erosion, and small animal populations 

(Latham and others 1998). This research was one of the first 

fire studies to replicate field experiments over a variety of 

environmental conditions, using a rigorous approach to field 

research on fire effects. The research helped initiate establishment of the Miller Creek Demonstration Forest on the 

Flathead National Forest, which serves as a “living laboratory” for forestry research to this day. A second extensive 

field study began at the Lubrecht Experimental Forest in 

1972, where fire was combined with silvicultural practices 

for management of forests dominated by ponderosa pine and 

Douglas-fir.

The Miller Creek-Newman Ridge and Lubrecht studies demonstrated the feasibility and importance of field 

research into fire ecology. Based on these successes, the 

Fire Lab launched an extensive Research, Development and 

Applications (RD&A) Program in 1974 to focus specifically 

on fire’s ecological effects. This move marked a major shift 

in Fire Lab research, which had, up to that point, focused on 

understanding, predicting, and ultimately controlling fire. 

The new RD&A program, on the other hand, took an interdisciplinary approach to determining the effects of fire on 

ecosystems and applying this knowledge to management. As 

Jim Lotan, who headed the new program, explained in an article in Environmental Management (1979), the Fire Effects 

RD&A included laboratory work, field studies, and software 

development to improve the land manager’s capability to integrate fire management considerations into land-use planning.

The RD&A program in turn led to new fire effects models, 

including FOFEM (First Order Fire Effects Model), developed 

by Elizabeth Reinhardt, Robert Keane, and others, for predicting tree mortality, fuel consumption, smoke production, and 

soil heating, as well as the Fire Effects Information System. 

FOFEM was designed to help natural resource managers 

make better-informed decisions when planning how to best 

protect the nation’s wildlands. Another model, FireBGCv2, 

has been developed by Robert Keane to simulate the interactions of weather and climate, vegetation growth, disturbances 

such as fire and insect infestations, and management activities 

across landscapes.

The 1970s also marked the beginning of Fire Lab research 

into fire history, including Stephen Arno’s studies (discussed 

above) and now, more recent studies by Emily Heyerdahl and 

colleagues to investigate spatial and temporal variation in fire 

history using the science of dendrochronology (or tree rings). 

The use of dendrochronology has provided a window into 

the deep past of many forests, enabling researchers to better 

understand the long-term role that climate and other factors 

have played in fire occurrence, fire behavior, and vegetation 

patterns. The results have immediate relevance for natural resource managers as they plan for potential effects of climate 

change.

Thinking Globally about the 

Long-Term Effects of Fire

In 2001, [Wei Min] Hao decided to develop a 

nationwide system to monitor in near real-time the 

distribution of active fires throughout space (across the 

land) and time, fire severity, burned areas, and smoke 

dispersions using the latest satellite remote sensing 

technology.... The information is critical ... in formulating daily firefighting strategies, resource allocation, 

and predicting air quality (Anjozian 2009).

While most of the Fire Lab’s work has focused on research questions regarding wildland fires in the United States, 

some research has been, of necessity, international in scope. 

Large-scale fires in South America or Africa, for example, 

can directly affect air quality and climate around the world, 

and contribute to the accumulation of atmospheric pollutants 

and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which is a growing 

global concern.

In 1987, the Fire Lab established a new research unit to 

begin investigating the chemistry of fire, including the production of smoke resulting from wildfires. While smoke 

associated with wildland fires can pose serious pollution and 

health-related problems in the continental United States, fires 

started deliberately by farmers, loggers, large commercial interests and others to clear land in Central and South America, 

Africa, and Southeast Asia contribute approximately 80 percent of all fire-related pollution each year. To better understand 

the extent of fire-related pollution and its long-term effects on 

air quality and greenhouse gasses, therefore, researchers need 

to look at fires around the globe.

In 1991, Fire Lab chemists Darold Ward and Wei Min 

Hao began working in partnership with NASA on designing and implementing field studies to measure the effects of 

human-caused fires. Starting in Brazil and South Africa, the 

researchers set up numerous decade-long field experiments 

to collect and analyze the composition of smoke produced 

by these fires. Like their other colleagues at the Fire Lab, the 

researchers did not design the experiments to directly affect 

public policy, but rather to provide scientific data to other scientists and the international policy community so that they 

could make more informed decisions about the impacts of 

fires on regional and global air quality and climate.

Since that time, Hao and his research team have expanded 

these studies into similar investigations of fires in Mexico, 
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 51

Russia, Canada, and the continental United States, using remote sensing data from satellites—in essence expanding their 

research from sampling instruments on the ground into studies 

that stretch over time and space. They also are investigating 

the long-term air-quality effects of fires in Siberia where global climate change could have a major impact, as seen in the 

Russian wildfires of 2010.

Hao’s work on questions like these led to his involvement, 

starting in 1994, with the United Nation’s Intergovernmental 

Panel for Climate Change, which enlisted scientists from 

around the world to better understand the long-term effects 

of climate change. Hao’s contributions focused on developing a methodology to quantify nitrous oxide, methane, and 

other greenhouse gases produced by fires in different ecosystems. As a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

Change, Hao and his fellow panel members were awarded 

the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for their “efforts to build up 

and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate 

change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are 

needed to counteract such change” (Nobel Prize 2007).

Looking to the Future

Our research facilities are uncharacteristically well 

maintained and are still highly relevant today, partly 

due to the pride that every incumbent in this building has had in this place. And it’s partly due to the 

incredible foresight and the engineering that went into 

building it. Our combustion chamber and two wind 

tunnels were state of the science in 1960 and are still 

very nearly state of the science today (C.C. Hardy 

2010).

Trained as an engineer, Richard Rothermel approached fire 

research as he would any engineering problem, with the assumption that the researcher will come up with an answer. 

That was a given from the very beginning. So the researcher 

does whatever is necessary to get that answer. For example, 

when attempting to understand fire behavior, Rothermel and 

his colleagues applied what was known about the physics of 

the problem, and then conducted experiments to fill in where 

the underlying physics was not known. When this process revealed gaps, the researchers made assumptions, put the model 

together, and then tested it to see how well it performed. This 

was an iterative process, but the goal was ultimately to produce an answer and deliver results of the project to wildland 

managers.

Such an approach suggests that fire research has, by its 

very nature, a beginning, a middle, and eventually an end. But 

fire research has a way of taking on a life of its own, when 

what one knew in the past simply is not adequate to respond 

to current events or conditions. After the fires of 1910, the 

Continuing a Family Tradition

Fire danger is weather driven, and Dad’s 

early work on fire weather was for fire danger 

rating. One of my early projects at the Fire 

Lab was working with Bob Burgan on using 

satellite data to ‘measure’ the condition of 

vegetation moisture using visible wave-lengths 

of light. Those reflected wavelengths to the 

satellite allowed us to calculate indexes that 

related to the condition of the vegetation and 

contributed to our ability to map fire danger 

nationally (C.C. Hardy 2010).

Fire danger rating depends on precise weather data. 

When C.E. (Mike) Hardy was assigned to work on 

the rating system in the early 1950s, he looked 

for ways to improve data gathering, often bringing 

home weather instrumentation to work on after 

hours. As he worked, his son Colin Hardy often 

“shadowed him,” trying to assist as his father tried 

out different kinds of stands and instrumentation. 

Colin vividly recalls working in the lab as early as 

1961, washing beakers and helping out after hours.

As Mike Hardy no doubt hoped at the time, these 

and other experiences made a strong and lasting 

impression on his son. Years later, Colin graduated 

with an interdisciplinary degree in resource 

conservation, and eventually completed a doctorate 

in forestry, with an emphasis on remote sensing of 

wildland fires. Thus Colin Hardy, now the Program 

Manager for all the research conducted at the Fire 

Lab, continued a family tradition of research and 

adapting new technologies to better understand 

wildland fires.

Colin and Mike Hardy, two generations of 

wildland fire researchers, c. 1954 (photo: 

Colin Hardy).
52 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

fledgling Forest Service realized how even one fire can shape 

public opinion. In much the same way, environmental concerns like global climate change and large-scale fires like 

those in Yellowstone have led to new research questions and 

demands for new management tools.

In addition, as more sophisticated instrumentation and 

measurement tools become available, researchers of today 

and tomorrow can pursue questions that were impossible 

to study, perhaps even impossible to articulate, in 1960. As 

Colin Hardy explained, in some ways it is as if the Fire Lab 

has backed up and started over, applying new capabilities to 

investigate a new theory and then testing the theory in the 

laboratory or in the field. For example, existing fire behavior 

models assume that energy moves from one particle to the 

next through radiant heat transfer, but researchers are now 

conducting very basic research, investigating the role of convection in igniting that second particle, as well as examining 

the role turbulence plays in heat transfer (C. C. Hardy, personal communication 2010).

Climate change adds to the host of questions the next generation of fire researchers needs to address. As ecosystems 

appear to be shifting in response to changed climate patterns, the fate of North American forests and other wildlands 

is uncertain. Managers now use fire to improve the health 

and sustainability of many wildland ecosystems with firedependent species. But if the climate changes, fundamental 

knowledge of the relationship between fire, species and ecosystem resilience may not apply in the same way. Managers 

will need new knowledge to better understand the complex 

interactions of fire and ecosystems, and insights into how existing knowledge can be applied in different ways.

In the meantime, grasses, shrubs, and trees continue to 

grow in many ecosystems that historically were shaped by frequent fire. According to Stephen Arno, duff, litter, and downed 

woody material continue to accumulate, and many formerly 

open forests have grown into dense expanses of continuous 

forest with shrubs and small trees providing “ladders” of fuel 

from ground to treetop. This can become a highly flammable 

environment under the right conditions. “If warming trends 

continue,” Arno noted, “and there’s no reason to think that 

they won’t, the handwriting is clearly on the wall....”(Arno, 

personal communication 2010).

Like the fires of 1910 and 1988 and the launching of Sputnik 

in 1957, external events such as global climate change may 

catalyze future innovations in fire science. If weather patterns 

change, creating longer and drier summers in some areas, then 

the fire season will probably become longer and potentially 

more dangerous. And yet, if managers exclude fires altogether from wildlands where they used to occur frequently, the 

forests may be doubly stressed by changing climate and by 

increasingly dense vegetation and fuels. Thus, managers 

continue to look to research to help them maintain healthy 

ecosystems and to help them better understand fire and forest 

ecology. For example, managers and researchers alike may 

ask new questions of the National Fire Danger Rating System, 

particularly if the fire season starts earlier in the spring and 

lasts longer in the fall.

As in the past, new technology—especially computing 

power and communication capabilities—will allow researchers and managers to explore innovative ideas in fire 

management and hypothetical outcomes. Much as Frank 

Albini’s nomograms provided practitioners with a visual tool 

for predicting fire behavior, computer visualization tools allow 

researchers to present data in ways that are easier to understand and interpret. These capabilities can be integrated into 

existing models and systems like BehavePlus and FARSITE, 

or they can be developed into tools that managers can use to 

make more informed decisions by graphically illustrating alternative decisions. Satellite imagery also provides new data 

for assessing air quality and fire danger, while providing better visualization tools for decision makers.

Models and systems also grow or change as new knowledge becomes available. As more and more sophisticated 

models and systems have been developed, however, some 

don’t fit together very well, according to Patricia Andrews. As 

the Fire Lab celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2010, Andrews 

and others are looking for ways to go back to the basic mathematical model building blocks to create modular programs 

that will make it easier to incorporate new research as it becomes available, while also more effectively integrating fire 

behavior, fire effects, weather, and smoke modeling systems. 

“We’re not going to run out of work anytime soon,” she said 

(Andrews, personal communication 2010).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 53

The Smokey Bear Fire Danger Rating Sign greets visitors to 

most state and national forests (photo: USDA Forest Service).

People Stop and Pay Attention 

When He Tells Them to Beware

The fundamental work initiated in the early 1960s 

at the Northern Forest Fire Research Laboratory 

has reaped many rewards, from sophisticated 

models for predicting fire behavior, to tools for 

understanding the critical role fire plays in ensuring 

the resilience and sustainability of the nation’s 

wildlands. But perhaps the most visible legacy of 

the Fire Lab’s research over the past 50 years is the 

Smokey Bear sign that greets visitors to state and 

national forests, alerting them to the fire danger for 

that day.

That rating, ranging from “low” to “extreme,” is still 

basically determined by the fuel, topography, and 

weather, or what Harry Gisborne first called the 

fire environment triangle. The signage suggests that 

the rating is based on Smokey’s intuition or friendly 

guess, but it is actually based largely on research 

produced by the Fire Lab. Each day, the danger 

rating is calculated using data from the network 

of weather stations first proposed by Gisborne 

and originally equipped with portable weather 

equipment constructed by C.E. (Mike) Hardy and 

his associates. Calculations come from the models 

and systems developed by John Deeming, Jack 

Cohen, Larry Bradshaw, and their colleagues, 

incorporating the fuel models developed by 

Jim Brown, Hal Anderson, and others, and the 

greenness indexes adapted by Bob Burgan, Bobbie 

Bartlette, and their colleagues at the Fire Lab. 

Without this sound basis in science, Smokey Bear 

would not have the information needed to predict 

that day’s danger.

As Jack Barrows noted, “had it not been for ... the 

pioneering work done at the [F]ire [L]ab at Missoula 

by Rothermel and others to develop a mathematical 

model of fire behavior, we wouldn’t see the fire 

danger rating system as it is now. So these things 

have a tendency to develop periodically and they 

can be applied to other lines of research and 

that’s exactly what happened in fire danger rating” 

(Barrows 1976).

Indeed, the pioneering research conducted at 

the Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula laid the 

groundwork for much of what is known today 

about the fundamentals of fire behavior and fire 

effects, resulting in increased forest protection, 

firefighter safety, and overall forest health. To ensure 

that the public protects its national forests and is 

informed about the risk of starting an accidental 

fire, the national fire danger map, based on Fire Lab 

research, continues to contribute to the fire danger 

rating sign Smoky Bear monitors to this day.
54 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

Fire Lab History:

Timeline of Key Events

1891—Congress gives the President the power to set aside 

public lands “with timber or undergrowth, whether of 

commercial value or not, as public reservations....”

1898—Department of Agriculture appoints Gifford Pinchot, 

known as the first American-born forester, to head the 

Division of Forestry. During his first year, Pinchot establishes a Section of Special Investigations, a research 

arm, and initiates a major study of wildfires in the United 

States.

1905—President Theodore Roosevelt signs the Transfer 

Act, establishing the Forest Service within the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture, with Gifford Pinchot the 

agency’s Chief Forester.

1910—Fires burn more than 3 million acres in Washington, 

Idaho, and Montana. The Forest Service, now under the 

leadership of Pinchot protégé Henry Graves, strengthens 

its policy to suppress fires.

1915—Henry Graves establishes the Forest Service Branch 

of Research. In the following year, Graves directs experiment stations to focus specifically on fire research.

1922—Harry Gisborne transfers to the Priest River 

Experimental Forest in Idaho to initiate the Forest 

Service’s first full-time fire research program.

1931—Harry Gisborne introduces the first Fire Danger 

Rating Meter, based on a Kodak Exposure Meter. For 

the light, exposure time, and aperture readings, Gisborne 

substituted fuel moisture, wind velocity, and relative 

humidity.

1934—Fire Danger Rating system developed by Harry 

Gisborne helps predict the Pete King-McLendon Butte 

fire, leading to a push for better weather data collection 

and fire management.

1935—Forest Service institutes the “quick-action strategy” 

(or ten o’clock rule) requiring that all fires “spotted in 

the course of a working day must be under control by ten 

o’clock the following morning.”

1946—Forester Jack Barrows joins Harry Gisborne at 

Missoula and Priest River as the nation’s second fulltime 

fire researcher at the Northern Rocky Mountain Research 

Station.

1949—Thirteen men are killed as a result of the Mann Gulch 

Fire near Helena, Montana. Three months later, Harry 

Gisborne, investigating the site of the fire, dies at the 

scene, in essence, the fourteenth casualty of the fire.

1952—Congress appropriates funds for a new Smokejumper 

Center west of Missoula, Montana, initiating a new 

Forest Service complex that would become home to the 

Northern Forest Fire Laboratory (“Fire Lab”) in 1960.

1952—The movie “Red Skies of Montana,” based on the 

tragedy of the Mann Gulch fire and starring Richard 

Widmark, released.

Coeur d’Alene National Forest after the 1910 fires 

(photo: USDA Forest Service). The 1949 Mann Gulch from the air 

(photo: USDA Forest Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 55

1953—Forest Service launches Project Skyfire, a collaborative research project with General Electric, to investigate 

methods to prevent or reduce the number of lightningcaused fires. Cloud seeding experiments initiated in 1956 

as part of this research project. (This program was later 

cancelled because of inadvertent effects on the weather 

and farming.)

1954—Intermountain and Northern Rocky Mountain 

Research Stations merge, with headquarters for the region established in Ogden, Utah.

1957—Soviet Union launches Sputnik, resulting in a renewed U.S. commitment to science education and 

research.

1958—Congress appropriates funds for the Northern Forest 

Fire Laboratory, one of three regional wildland fire research facilities planned for the Forest Service (with 

facilities also designated for Riverside, California, and 

Macon, Georgia).

1958—First Fire Behavior Officers’ training course, open to 

all agency personnel, offered at the Smoke Jumper Center 

in Missoula.

1960—The Northern Forest Fire Laboratory dedicated on 

September 12 in Missoula, Montana, by Forest Service 

Chief Richard McArdle and U.S. Representative, Lee 

Metcalf.

1961—Jack Barrows, Fire Lab Chief, hires several Idaho 

National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) researchers, including Richard Rothermel, Hal Anderson, and Stanley 

Hirsch as well as skilled technicians, Erv Breuer and 

Merlin Brown.

1962—Stanley Hirsch and his research team conduct one of 

the earliest tests of Project Fire Scan. Using a civilian version of infrared scanning for airborne fire detection, the 

researchers successfully mapped a 300-acre controlled 

burn 2,000 feet deep in a valley, where a temperature inversion had trapped a layer of smoke, obscuring visual 

detection.

1964—Jack Barrows promoted to head the Forest Service 

Fire and Atmospheric Science Research program in 

Washington, DC.

1964—The Wilderness Act designates an initial 9.1 million 

acres of national forests and wildlands as wilderness areas where “the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man,” where the “wilderness character” 

and integrity of the land are to be preserved, and forests 

and wildlands are allowed to change over time without 

interference.

Using a portable weather station to gather 

fire weather data during the 1959 Brackett 

Creek Fire in the Gallatin Natioinal Forest 

(photo: USDA Forest Service).

Early fire danger rating 

signage (photo: USDA 

Forest Service).

Mounting silver iodide generator for 

Project Skyfire, 1964 (photo: USDA 

Forest Service).
56 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

1966—William Beaufait, Charles (Mike) Hardy, and 

William (Bill) Fischer initiate one of the few large-scale 

controlled research projects at the 5,000 acre Miller 

Creek area in Montana on the effect of prescribed fire on 

air quality, vegetation development, conifer regeneration, 

water quality, erosion, and small animal populations.

1970—Fire Lab scientist Robert Mutch and Forest Service 

forester David Aldrich initiate a study of how to allow fire 

to assume its natural role in the national forests, particularly those designated as wilderness.

1972—Richard Rothermel publishes “A Mathematical 

Model for Predicting Fire Spread in Wildland Fuels,” a 

quantitative tool for predicting the spread and intensity of 

forest fires that continues to form the basis for fire behavior prediction and fire danger rating systems.

1972—John Deeming and others publish the “National FireDanger Rating System,” which is implemented nationally 

to “aid in planning and supervising fire control activities 

on a fire protection unit.” The system was the first application of the Rothermel fire spread model as part of the 

basic platform of a national management tool.

1972—Fire scientist Robert Mutch and Forest Service 

employee Dave Aldrich complete their White Cap Fire 

Management Prescribed Natural Fire plan, which is approved by Forest Service Chief John McGuire and implemented successfully that summer. In August, a fire breaks 

out in Bad Luck Creek within the test area, and the decision is made to let it burn. The fire lasts 4 days and burns 

less than a quarter of an acre.

1974—Forest Service establishes the Fire in Multiple-Use 

Management Research, Development and Applications 

(RD&A) Program to improve the land manager’s capability to integrate fire into land-use planning and management activities. Headed by Jim Lotan, this program initiated new research into fire as a way to meet objectives 

rather than just a force to be controlled.

1974—Jim Brown publishes “Handbook for inventorying 

downed woody material,” which provides the foundation 

for quantitative measurement and analysis of wildland 

fuels.

1976—Frank Albini publishes his nomographs (also known 

as “nomograms”), visual calculating devices to help 

predict fire behavior in the field. Richard Rothermel described it as letting “the genie out of the bottle.”

1976—Frank Albini, Hal Anderson, and Richard Rothermel 

develop and teach a new fire behavior officers’ course at 

Marana, Arizona, for fire analysts from all Federal agencies using Rothermel’s fire spread model and Albini’s 

nomograms.

1977—Patricia (Pat) Andrews makes an initial presentation 

on the BEHAVE fire behavior prediction system, the first 

computerized system to incorporate many of the Fire Lab 

Early field research with anenometers, 

1962 (photo: USDA Forest Service).

Chemist E.C. Lory uses gas chromatography 

to test pyrolysis, 1963 (photo: USDA Forest 

Service).

Fire Lab education activities 

during 2004 open house (photo: 

USDA Forest Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 57

models. Because of insufficient computer capabilities in 

the field to run the program, however, the system was not 

available widely until 1984, when it was officially implemented nationwide.

1977—Researchers at the Fire Lab, including Jack Deeming, 

Bob Burgan, and Jack Cohen update the National Fire 

Danger Rating System. Fire managers use quantitative 

products from the system for planning. Descriptors ranging from low to extreme are communicated to the general 

public on Smokey Bear and other signage.

1978—The Forest Service officially ends the “10 a.m. rule” 

(or policy), allowing some fires on national forest lands 

to continue burning for “predetermined beneficial purposes.” The name of the Division of Fire Control changes 

to the Division of Fire Management.

1979—Robert Burgan develops a pre-programmed chip to 

run on a TI-59 hand-held calculator, allowing managers 

to use the Rothermel model to calculate fire spread in the 

field. This new computer capability also enables managers to analyze prescribed burns and other proactive fire 

management activities.

1981—Bill Fischer publishes the first photo guides for appraising wildland fuels, which is an approach for field 

assessment of fuels that has been followed by dozens of 

publications nationwide.

1984—BEHAVE fire behavior prediction system is implemented nationwide.

1985—Jim Brown, Bill Fischer, and Cameron (Cam) 

Johnston initiate the Fire Effects Information System, 

a computer-based “encyclopedia” of effects of fire on 

plants and animals in North America. The system is 

moved to the Internet in 1994.

1987—The Fire Lab establishes a new Fire Chemistry research unit, with scientist Darold Ward appointed project 

leader. In 1989, the Forest Service moves its fire chemistry program from Macon, Georgia to the Missoula facility 

and, in 1991, Wei Min Hao joins the lab, to work on a major study of global air quality in partnership with NASA.

1988—Fires burn close to a million acres in Yellowstone 

National Park and lead fire researchers to develop additional models for fire behavior in extreme conditions.

1989—Forest Service moves its fire chemistry program 

from Macon, Georgia, to the Missoula Fire Lab.

1989—Bob Keane, Elizabeth Reinhardt, and Jim Brown introduce the first generation of FOFEM—the First Order 

Fire Effects Model—an easy-to-use software package 

that allows fire and land managers to predict, plan for, 

and quantify the immediate effects of fire.

1991—Wei Min Hao joins the Fire Lab, to work on a major 

study of global air quality in partnership with NASA.

1991—Richard Rothermel publishes “Predicting Behavior 

and Size of Crown Fires in the Northern Rocky 

Mountains,” the result of research motivated in part by 

the 1988 Yellowstone fires.

Firefighter during 1988 Yellowstone 

National Fire (photo: Jeff Henry, 

National Park Service).
58 USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012.

1994—The Fire Effects Information System is moved to the 

Internet.

1998—Mark Finney publishes FARSITE, a fire area simulator that integrates several fire models, improved visualization technology, and GIS data to calculate and visually display where a fire might grow and how quickly it 

might spread under changing terrain, fuels, and weather 

conditions.

2000—Jane Kapler Smith and Nancy McMurray complete 

the FireWorks educational trunk, providing educational 

materials and a fire-related curriculum tied to state and 

national science standards.

2002—Satellite receiving station added to the Fire Lab to 

download data on detected “hot spots” from two new satellites, sometimes as often as 12 times a day. Researchers 

compile this information with data collected on the 

ground, including reports of fire, to provide a more complete picture of atmospheric smoke and other pollutants. 

The resulting analyses also are used to predict air quality 

downwind from large fires across the continental United 

States.

2007—Fire Lab chemist, Wei Min Hao, a member of the 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, awarded 

the Nobel Peace Prize for the Panel’s “efforts to build up 

and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures 

that are needed to counteract such change.”

2008—Emily Heyerdahl, Penelope Morgan, and James 

Riser publish their study of the early fire histories of ponderosa pine forests of Idaho and western Montana (from 

1650-1900). Their research is part of their larger study using fire scars and tree ring reconstructions to investigate 

climate drivers of fire in the Northern Rockies.

2009—A new addition to the Fire Lab, which houses administrative offices and the Fire Effects Library (more 

than 60,000 articles on ecology and fire effects) officially 

opens.

2010—Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula celebrates 

50 years of research on September 18.

In 2010, the Fire Lab hosted an 

open house in celebration of its 

50th anniversary (photo: USDA 

Forest Service).

Fire Lab retirees gather during the 

50th anniversary in 2010 (photo: 

USDA Forest Service).
USDA Forest Service RMRS-GTR-270. 2012. 59

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