`[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]






                                 ______


 
                   ENHANCING FIRE WEATHER PREDICTION
                            AND COORDINATION

=======================================================================

                                     
                                     
                                     

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                             AND TECHNOLOGY

                                 OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             JULY 12, 2023

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-19

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
 
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       Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
       
       
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             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
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              COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                  HON. FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, Chairman
BILL POSEY, Florida                  ZOE LOFGREN, California, Ranking 
RANDY WEBER, Texas                       Member
BRIAN BABIN, Texas                   SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
JIM BAIRD, Indiana                   HALEY STEVENS, Michigan
DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida              JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York
MIKE GARCIA, California              DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
STEPHANIE BICE, Oklahoma             ERIC SORENSEN, Illinois
JAY OBERNOLTE, California            ANDREA SALINAS, Oregon
CHUCK FLEISCHMANN, Tennessee         VALERIE FOUSHEE, North Carolina
DARRELL ISSA, California             KEVIN MULLIN, California
RICK CRAWFORD, Arkansas              JEFF JACKSON, North Carolina
CLAUDIA TENNEY, New York             EMILIA SYKES, Ohio
RYAN ZINKE, Montana                  MAXWELL FROST, Florida
SCOTT FRANKLIN, Florida              YADIRA CARAVEO, Colorado
DALE STRONG, Alabama                 SUMMER LEE, Pennsylvania
MAX MILLER, Ohio                     JENNIFER McCLELLAN, Virginia
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia              TED LIEU, California
MIKE COLLINS, Georgia                SEAN CASTEN, Illinois,
BRANDON WILLIAMS, New York             Vice Ranking Member
TOM KEAN, New Jersey                 PAUL TONKO, New York
VACANCY
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                             July 12, 2023

                                                                   Page

Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                           Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Chairman, Committee on 
  Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives..     5
    Written Statement............................................     6

Statement by Representative Zoe Lofgren, Ranking Member, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................     6
    Written Statement............................................     8

                               Witnesses:

Mr. Mark Goeller, State Forester/Director, Oklahoma Department of 
  Agriculture, Food and Forestry
    Oral Statement...............................................     9
    Written Statement............................................    11

Mr. James Peverill, Founder/CEO, GreenSight
    Oral Statement...............................................    16
    Written Statement............................................    18

Dr. Ali Tohidi, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and 
  Wildfire Dynamics, San Jose State University
    Oral Statement...............................................    23
    Written Statement............................................    25

Discussion.......................................................    38

              Appendix: Additional Material for the Record

Letter submitted by Representative Max Miller, Committee on 
  Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives
    Tim Donovan, President and CEO, Competitive Carriers 
      Association................................................    72


                   ENHANCING FIRE WEATHER PREDICTION



                            AND COORDINATION

                              ----------                              


                        WEDNESDAY, JULY 12, 2023

                          House of Representatives,
               Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                   Washington, D.C.

    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 
2318, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Frank Lucas [Chairman 
of the Committee] presiding.
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[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2705.003

    Chairman Lucas. The Committee will come to order. Without 
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess of the 
Committee at any time. I recognize myself for five minutes for 
an opening statement.
    Good morning, and welcome to today's Full Committee hearing 
examining fire weather prediction tools and capacities. Today's 
discussion will help us assess the collaboration and 
coordination between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration (NOAA) and other Federal departments and 
agencies, and State and local officials, to ensure the safety 
of people and property. Today's hearing is timely as we enter 
the summer months, which have traditionally marked the 
beginning of wildfire season.
    However, I'm sure many of my Western colleagues would agree 
that there's not much of a true wildfire season anymore. They 
seem to occur year-round. In 2022 alone, the National 
Interagency Fire Center reported almost 69,000 fires that 
burned 7.5 million acres of land in the United States. Over the 
past month, the United States has had some of the worst air 
quality numbers in the world due to smoke from Canadian 
wildfires.
    By advancing our weather capacities, we have a chance to 
limit the size and scope of future fires, as well as improve 
research into air quality changes that come with fires. 
Lengthier droughts, hotter temperatures, and poorly maintained 
Federal lands are all contributing to a greater frequency and 
intensity of wildfires across the country and around the world.
    There is no silver bullet to completely prevent fires, but 
we can make significant progress in protecting our communities 
if we improve the forecasting and prediction of weather 
conditions that lead to fires. Our witnesses today are involved 
with State emergency management, commercial sector innovation, 
and academic research to enhance the sustainability and 
accuracy of fire weather information. Their testimony will 
inform our work on legislation to better prepare communities 
and regions facing the rapid spread of fires.
    Let me be clear, the objective of this hearing and any 
future legislation related to wildfires is not for the Federal 
Government to make decisions for people. But by providing State 
and local emergency managers the most accurate information 
possible, the Federal Government will be able to give local 
community leaders and everyday citizens the knowledge and 
understanding they need to make their own decisions.
    NOAA and the National Weather Service cannot tackle this 
problem on their own. Long gone are the days of fire watchers 
sitting in towers with binoculars scanning for smoke. A robust 
partnership with the commercial sector is necessary to help 
boost our forecasting and prediction capacities. I look forward 
to hearing about the advancements that the commercial sector 
has made with new technologies, including unmanned aerial 
aircraft. These are the types of innovations that will 
inevitably save the lives of firefighters and other emergency 
officials.
    Today's hearing is important because it allows us to 
examine a wide range of sectors that partner with Federal 
departments and agencies to utilize different types of fire 
weather data. Their input will help us ensure the direction and 
resources we provide NOAA end up benefiting most Americans and 
avoiding wasteful duplication.
    I thank our witnesses for sharing their expertise with us, 
and I look forward to a productive discussion.
    [The prepared statement of Chairman Lucas follows:]

    Good morning and welcome to today's Full Committee hearing 
examining fire weather prediction tools and capabilities.
    Today's discussion will help us assess the collaboration 
and coordination between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Administration (NOAA), other Federal departments and agencies, 
and state and local officials to ensure the safety of people 
and property.
    Today's hearing is timely as we enter the summer months, 
which have traditionally marked the beginning of wildfire 
season.
    However, I'm sure many of my western colleagues would agree 
that there is not much of a true wildfire season anymore, with 
fires occurring year-round.
    In 2022 alone, the National Interagency Fire Center 
reported almost 69,000 fires that burned 7.5 million acres of 
land in the United States. Over the past month, the United 
States has had some of the worst air quality numbers in the 
world due to the smoke from Canadian wildfires.
    By advancing our fire weather capabilities, we have the 
chance to limit the size and scope of future fires, as well as 
improve research into air quality changes that come from fires.
    Lengthier droughts, hotter temperatures, and poorly 
maintained federal lands are all contributing to a greater 
frequency and intensity of wildfires across the country and 
around the world.
    There is no silver bullet to completely prevent fires, but 
we can make significant progress in protecting our communities 
if we improve the forecasting and prediction of weather 
conditions that lead to fires.
    Our witnesses today are involved with state emergency 
management, commercial sector innovation, and academic research 
to enhance the sustainability and accuracy of fire weather 
information.
    Their testimony will inform our work on legislation to 
better prepare communities and regions facing the rapid spread 
of fires.
    Let me be clear, the objective of this hearing, and any 
future legislation related to wildfires, is not for the Federal 
government to make decisions for people.
    But by providing state and local emergency managers the 
most accurate information possible, the Federal government will 
be able to give local community leaders and everyday citizens 
the knowledge and understanding they need to make their own 
decisions.
    NOAA and the National Weather Service cannot tackle this 
problem on their own. Long gone are the days of fire watchers 
sitting in towers with binoculars scanning for smoke.
    A robust partnership with the commercial sector is 
necessary to help bolster our forecasting and prediction 
abilities. I look forward to hearing about the advancements 
that the commercial sector has made with new technologies, 
including unmanned aerial aircraft. These are the types of 
innovations that will inevitably save the lives of firefighters 
and other emergency officials.
    Today's hearing is important because it allows us to 
examine a wide range of sectors that partner with Federal 
departments and agencies to utilize different types of fire 
weather data. Their input will help us ensure the direction and 
resources we provide to NOAA end up benefiting the most 
Americans and avoid wasteful duplication.
    I thank our witnesses for sharing their expertise with us 
and I look forward to a productive discussion.

    Chairman Lucas. I now recognize the Ranking Member, the 
gentlewoman from California, for an opening statement.
    Ms. Lofgren. Well, good morning. And thank you, Chairman 
Lucas, for holding this really important hearing. And I want to 
thank the witnesses again for coming to share your expertise on 
this topic which is of such importance to our country.
    Every year, wildlife--wildfires take lives and cause 
billions of dollars in damage. Perhaps most concerning is that 
the frequency and destructiveness of wildfires are increasing 
due to climate change. Now, I'm from California, and I see the 
impacts of wildfires and communities firsthand. In 2020, Santa 
Clara County where I'm from experienced the fourth largest 
wildfire in California State history. The SCU (Santa Clara 
Unit) Lightning Complex fire burned over 396,000 acres, 
destroyed 225 structures, damaged a further 26 structures, and 
injured six people. And that's in addition to other very 
destructive wildfires that resulted in deaths to individuals.
    Now, thanks to brave emergency responders, these fires are 
dealt with. But despite the critical role, emergency responders 
and wildland firefighters play in protecting lives and property 
and the considerable danger they put themselves in in doing so, 
they're significantly under-resourced. Support for our 
firefighters is far from the only challenge when it comes to 
reducing risks from wildland fires. Many agencies and 
organizations from local to Federal level play a role in 
mitigating and responding to wildfires, posing challenges for 
interagency coordination and efficient use of finite resources.
    At the Federal level, while there is coordination when it 
comes to wildfire response, there are significant gaps in 
coordination when it comes to increasing scientific 
understanding, prediction, resilience, and communication for 
wildland fires. We can't just keep responding to disasters. We 
need to invest more in preventing them where we can. And that's 
why I'm reintroducing this week the National Wildland Fire Risk 
Reduction Program Act. This bill would strengthen the Federal 
coordination of research and operational efforts across 
multiple Federal science agencies and support a more efficient 
and effective whole-of-government response to reducing wildland 
fire risk. And I am looking forward to working with our 
Chairman to move a bipartisan package of wildland fire bills 
through the Committee and hopefully on to the Congress itself.
    Some of the most important information for wildfire 
detection, mitigation, and emergency response comes from 
observational systems and predictive models. Now, we have 
mountains of data currently collected from assets owned and 
operated across academic, private, and the public sector, but 
there are considerable gaps in data, and there's also 
inadequate coordination and dissemination of that data. For 
example, many datasets lack the desired spatial and temporal 
resolution for maximum utility in modeling applications. 
Wildfire forecasting models also need to be improved to better 
predict wildfire ignition and behavior. Coupled wildfire 
models, which integrate our best understanding of the physics 
of fire, interactions between fire and weather, are promising 
tools for improving real-time predictions of fire behavior.
    I'm so pleased that Dr. Tohidi, who is an expert in coupled 
fire weather modeling, is here from my own San Jose State in my 
district, and he is doing impressive work at the university 
about how Congress can help support innovations in modeling, 
along with our other two excellent witnesses.
    The increasing threat of wildfires poses to our community 
and our brave firefighters on the frontlines requires the 
Nation to effectively understand and predict fires, manage our 
wildlands safely, and expeditiously respond to them. I very 
much look forward to our testimony.
    And just a note, all of us are in multiple Committees, and 
another Committee is meeting at this very moment, so I'm going 
to take a brief recess to go to that Committee and I'll be 
right back. This is one of the most important things before 
this Committee and before this Congress.
    And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Lofgren follows:]

    Good morning. Thank you to Chairman Lucas for holding this 
important hearing, and thank you to the witnesses for coming to 
share your expertise on this topic of utmost importance with us 
today.
    Every year, wildfires take lives and cause billions of 
dollars in damage. Perhaps most concerning is that the 
frequency and destructiveness of wildfires are increasing due 
to climate change.
    Coming from California, I see the impacts of wildfires on 
communities first-hand. In 2020, Santa Clara County, which is 
part of my Congressional District, experienced the fourth 
largest wildfire in California state history. The SCU Lightning 
Complex Fire burned over 396,000 acres, destroyed 225 
structures, damaged a further 26 structures, and injured 6 
people. Thanks to the brave emergency responders the fire was 
contained with no fatalities.
    Despite the critical role emergency responders and wildland 
firefighters play in protecting lives and property--and the 
considerable danger they put themselves in to do so--they are 
still significantly under resourced.
    Support for our firefighters is far from the only challenge 
when it comes to reducing risks from wildland fires. Many 
agencies and organizations from the local to federal level play 
a role in mitigating and responding to wildfires, posing 
challenges for interagency coordination and efficient use of 
finite resources. At the Federal level, while there is 
coordination when it comes to wildfire response, there are 
significant gaps in coordination when it comes to increasing 
scientific understanding, prediction, resilience, and 
communication for wildland fires. We can't just keep responding 
to disasters. We must invest more in preventing them where we 
can. That is why I am reintroducing this week the National 
Wildland Fire Risk Reduction Program Act. This bill would 
strengthen the federal coordination of research and operational 
efforts across multiple federal science agencies, and support a 
more efficient and effective whole-of-government response to 
reducing wildland fire risk. I look forward to working with 
Chairman Lucas to move a bipartisan package of wildland fire 
bills through the Committee this Congress.
    Some of the most important information for wildfire 
detection, mitigation, and emergency response comes from 
observational systems and predictive models. While mountains of 
data are currently collected from assets owned and operated 
across the academic, private, and public sectors, there are 
still considerable gaps in data. For example, many datasets 
lack the desired spatial and temporal resolution for maximum 
utility in modeling applications. Wildfire forecasting models 
also need to be improved to better predict wildfire ignition 
and behavior. Coupled fire-weather models, which integrate our 
best understanding of the physics of fire and interactions 
between fire and weather are promising tools for improving 
real-time predictions of fire behavior. I am excited to hear 
from one of my constituents, Dr. Tohidi, who is an expert in 
coupled fire-weather modeling, about how Congress can help 
support innovations in observational data and wildfire 
predictive modeling. The increasing threat wildfires pose to 
our communities and to our brave firefighters on the front 
lines requires our nation to effectively understand and predict 
fires, manage our wildlands, and safely and expediently respond 
to them.
    I greatly look forward to hearing from our witnesses today 
on how Congress can support these endeavors. Thank you to our 
committee members and witnesses for joining us today to engage 
in this important discussion. I yield back.

    Chairman Lucas. Thank you, Ranking Member.
    Our first witness today is Dr.--sorry, Mr. Mark Goeller. 
Mark is the State Forester and Director of the Oklahoma 
Department of Agriculture, Forest--Food and Forestry Services 
Division. While earning a bachelor of science and agriculture 
forestry management degree from Oklahoma State University, Mark 
began fighting wildfires with the U.S. Forestry Service in 1980 
and has served as an incident commander on literally hundreds 
of multiagency, multijurisdictional fires.
    Our second witness is Mr. James Peverill, founder and CEO 
(Chief Executive Officer) of GreenSight, a technology company 
that builds products built on a common technology platform 
applying robotics and AI (artificial intelligence) to solve 
high-impact problems in agriculture, defense, and weather 
monitoring.
    And our third witness is Ali Tohidi, an Assistant Professor 
of Mechanical Engineering at Santa Jose State University and 
co-Principal Investigator at their Wildfire Interdisciplinary 
Research Center. His current research is based on developing 
the next generation of operational wildfire weather behavior 
models.
    So now that I've slaughtered your last names, let's move 
on. I now recognize Dr.--Mr. Goeller for five minutes to 
present his testimony.

                 TESTIMONY OF MR. MARK GOELLER,

                    STATE FORESTER/DIRECTOR,

              OKLAHOMA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,

                       FOOD AND FORESTRY

    Mr. Goeller. Thank you, Chairman Lucas and Ranking Member 
Lofgren, Members of the Committee, for inviting me to this 
hearing today and the opportunity to testify on behalf of 
Oklahoma Forestry Services and the National Association of 
State Foresters. I'm Mark Goeller, State Forester, Chair of the 
Southern Group of State Foresters, and member of the National 
Association of State Foresters Executive Committee.
    Nearly every State Forester is required by their individual 
statutes to deliver wildland fire prevention, detection, 
suppression, and investigation. State Foresters also support 
Federal land management agencies nationwide through cooperative 
agreements to conduct wildland fire operations.
    My wildland firefighting career began in 1980, and I've 
fought wildfires in 22 States. I'm currently qualified as a 
Type 1 Incident Commander and serve on both State and national 
incident management teams. These experiences, along with 
serving as a Fire Management Chief for 13 years and now as 
State Forester, I have an advanced understanding that the key 
to minimizing loss of life and property depends on fire weather 
forecasting, early wildfire detection, wildfire preparedness, 
and response.
    Wildfire is common in Oklahoma. Prior to 2015, I would have 
an on-average one day's warning that areas of the State would 
experience high to extreme fire danger. That changed in late 
2015 when the National Weather Service officials approached our 
agency to inform us of their research and new findings related 
to impactful fire weather systems. Because of this relationship 
with the National Weather Service, my fire management staff now 
has from three to seven days to pre-position firefighting 
resources for response. Red flag warnings have transitioned 
from strictly meeting hot, dry, windy criteria to currently a 
threat index of where the probability of high impact wildfires 
will occur in the State, early warning where fire effective 
weather systems will intersect. High severity wildland fuels 
also allows for focused fire prevention messaging and 
firefighter safety briefings. Firefighter and public safety is 
greatly enhanced through this improved situational awareness.
    Oklahoma's wildfire detection system traditionally is 
limited to our commercial timber lands in far eastern Oklahoma, 
and we have lost all of our fire towers and man those and have 
gone strictly to other means. New wildfires are now detected 
statewide by the National Weather Service's GOES (Geostationary 
Operational Environmental Satellite) 16 and 17 satellites and 
typically within 1/4 mile accuracy. Often, these emerging 
wildfires are detected before they're reported by the public to 
911 dispatch centers.
    These advances in fire weather forecasting and wildfire 
detection by the National Weather Service during high to 
extreme fire danger has allowed State, Federal, and local 
firefighting agencies to target aggressive initial attack in 
areas where wildfire would have the greatest potential and 
impact of loss of lives, values at risk, and natural resources.
    Another innovation employed in Oklahoma is to issue fire 
warnings utilizing an integrated warning team approach. This 
warning system involves the local National Weather Service 
forecast office detecting and communicating to partners the 
location of a potentially dangerous wildfire. Oklahoma forestry 
services utilizing Wildfire Analyst, a commercially available 
modeling software to predict the potential spread from 
wildfire's ignition point. We contact the incident commander 
and local emergency managers to confirm the warning need and 
also to provide the relevant evacuation information. And 
finally, State emergency management broadcasts the fire 
warnings through the Emergency Alert System to a targeted area 
jointly identified by the National Weather Service and Oklahoma 
Forestry Services.
    While this seems pretty cumbersome, the fire--fire warnings 
issued in just 6 minutes on a recent wildfire occurring in a 
heavily populated wildland urban interface (WUI) area in the 
Oklahoma City metro. Oklahoma is the first State in the Nation 
to utilize this system. Using our legacy process, it often 
required approximately 90 minutes to issue the fire warning.
    As an incident commander responsible for recommending 
evacuations in advance of an approaching wildfire, it's 
imperative that local officials with evacuation 
responsibilities and the public are provided with the greatest 
advanced warning and most accurate evacuation information 
possible to minimize the loss of life. Oklahoma's fire warning 
system gives the time and decision space to facilitate an 
orderly, safe evacuation.
    These advances in Oklahoma and Texas would not be possible 
without the close relationship between the National Weather 
Service forecast offices, Oklahoma Forestry Service, and Texas 
A&M Forest Service. The ability to utilize each other's 
resources is critical to success in providing for firefighter 
safety and minimizing loss of life and property. This 
collaborative approach and technological advances in fire 
weather forecasting and detection can be easily applied to 
preparedness and response actions nationwide.
    In closing, I appreciate the Committee holding this 
important hearing to investigate how National Weather Service 
and other entities will impact future wildland fire 
preparedness and response nationally through improved and 
emerging technologies. I look forward to answering any 
questions. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Goeller follows:]
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    Chairman Lucas. Thank you. We now turn to you, James, for 
your five minutes.

                TESTIMONY OF MR. JAMES PEVERILL,

                    FOUNDER/CEO, GREENSIGHT

    Mr. Peverill. Chairman Lucas, Ranking Member Lofgren, and 
Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting GreenSight to 
testify today before the Committee on Science, Space, and 
Technology to discuss innovative products and services provided 
by the commercial sector and how they can partner with the 
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration for the 
improvement of fire weather nowcasting and prediction. I'm 
James Peverill, co-founder and CEO of GreenSight.
    At the outset, I'd like to mention that it is a very 
exciting time in the United States for new and innovative 
technologies, especially for drone technologies, robotics, and 
artificial intelligence. For both civil and defense 
applications, these systems are showing tremendous value. 
Whether it's the unmanned drone conducting missions on the 
surface of Mars or military drones playing increased roles in 
our national security, these systems have a proven record for 
aiding government missions.
    GreenSight is an innovative small business based in Boston, 
Massachusetts, that specializes in exotic robotic systems for 
transformative business applications. We're focused on several 
different markets, including agriculture, weather, and defense. 
We have several product lines, all based on a common platform 
of USA-made hardware and software components that empower end 
users to solve their mission requirements.
    As it pertains to the mission of environmental prediction 
in today's hearing, GreenSight is currently collaborating with 
the Air Force Weather Service and Defense Innovation Unit using 
our WeatherHive system for prototype development. GreenSight's 
WeatherHive is a unique sensing technology that uses swarms of 
nanosized drones to directly measure atmospheric conditions. 
This system can sample up to 200 square miles per flight, 
generating a dense 3D cube of measurements. This technology was 
initially developed through a National Science Foundation- 
(NSF-) funded SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) grant 
and has now been selected by the U.S. Air Force and Defense 
Innovation Unit for prototype development, contract, and 
potential procurement. This selection was made under the 
Peacetime Indications and Warning: Global Weather Sensing 
commercial solutions opening.
    WeatherHive data shows promise to enable new breakthroughs 
in weather forecasting and climate science. Armed with data 
from WeatherHive, forecasting models may be able to much more 
accurately predict tornado formation, severe storm behavior, 
wildfire movement, and hurricane paths. It is a promising new 
tool against increasingly common severe weather conditions that 
cause property damage, injuries, and deaths every year.
    For the specific mission of fire weather, NOAA would 
benefit from an enhanced mission focus to improve their 
detection and forecasting capabilities. As a commercial 
company, we feel we can assist NOAA with this mission by 
providing critical data that improves the accuracy and 
timeliness of information to inform the public and safeguard 
lives and property. Previously, our conversations with NOAA 
have been centered around other weather events such as 
tornadoes, but applications for fire weather are equally as 
beneficial, if not more.
    The unique aspects of fire events place a greater emphasis 
on remote sensing. Fires are inherently dangerous and often 
happen in remote areas that are difficult to reach. Using 
sensing technologies such as drone swarms will allow NOAA to 
continuously monitor and collect various forms of data in a 
safe and efficient manner. The data collected by the 
WeatherHive system can be streamed in real time and used for 
both nowcasting events and in forecasting prediction systems 
and models. The data that WeatherHive collected is also 
compatible with many existing analytical tools, so there'll be 
minimal need to redevelop forecasting infrastructure to ingest 
these new types of data.
    By establishing research partnerships, NOAA would be able 
to harness the ingenuity of American industry. These 
partnerships can be mutually beneficial and lead to 
breakthroughs in technologies that improve our scientific 
understanding of fire weather. Likewise, the establishment and 
coordination of mechanisms for commercial data buys will allow 
NOAA to quickly ingest new sources of data to improve 
prediction of fire weather events. GreenSight stands ready to 
assist and partner with NOAA to improve their mission 
requirements for both research and operations.
    Lastly, an issue that must be addressed when moving these 
types of innovative technologies into widespread operational 
use is complying with the associated regulatory framework. 
Historically, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has the 
regulatory authority to grant the use and restriction of drones 
in the United States. Utilizing novel and unique use cases for 
drones means that the FAA needs to address potentially outdated 
Federal regulations and look for creative solutions to offer 
integration into both public and private missions.
    WeatherHive is designed to operate with minimal risk to 
aviators, people, and property, while promising to offer 
significant overall benefits to public safety. I look forward 
to working with the FAA to ensure that our progress in these 
technologies is not limited so that we can continue to partner 
with the Federal Government to improve mission success.
    Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee, 
I thank you for the opportunity to testify you--before you 
today, and I'd be pleased to answer any questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Peverill follows:]
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    Chairman Lucas. Thank you. I now recognize Dr. Tohidi for 
five minutes to present his testimony.

        TESTIMONY OF DR. ALI TOHIDI, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

        OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AND WILDFIRE DYNAMICS,

                   SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY

    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Lucas, 
Ranking Member Lofgren, and other distinguished Members of this 
Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear as a witness 
in this hearing on a topic of growing importance to both the 
Nation and the world. We appreciate the Committee's attention 
to wildfires and the efforts you have undertaken over the last 
few years to invest in wildfire science.
    My name is Ali Tohidi, and I'm an Assistant Professor of 
Mechanical Engineering at San Jose State, and I'm also co-
principal investigator of Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research 
Center at San Jose State. My background is in fluid and fire 
dynamics, and my research and development efforts over the past 
10-plus years have been dedicated to understanding the 
fundamentals of wildfire spread mechanisms, particularly a 
phenomenon called firebrand shower, also known as ember attack. 
In this testimony, I present a concise overview of wildfire 
physics and modeling approaches and elaborate on some of the 
identified challenges by the fire science community. Then I 
provide recommendations to overcome them.
    Wildfires are an important part of the ecosystem globally. 
However, detrimental effects of the climate change, poor land 
management practices such as fire exclusion, and continuous 
growth of the wildland urban interface or, as we call it, WUI 
areas, have transitioned wildfires regimes to extreme and high 
impact events leading to loss of lives, severe disturbances in 
biological systems, and--biological systems, and causing 
billions of dollars in damages. The impacts are projected to 
grow in severity and magnitude. Thus, we need our communities 
to become more resilient to wildfires.
    A key component to achieve this is the ability to 
accurately estimate the potential progression of the fire 
through the landscape and our communities. Fire models--fire 
weather models fulfill this objective by simulating fire spread 
mechanisms and their secondary effects on their environment. 
Briefly, wildfires are spread by the progression of the fire 
front through heat transfer from flames and hot gases to 
onboard combustibles and ignition of spot fires far ahead of 
the main fire front by firebrand showers.
    While our fundamental understanding of some of these 
processes is improving and findings are partially implemented 
in models, it is still challenging to deliver a high fidelity 
forecast. This is due to the multiphysics, multiscale, and 
stochastic nature of wildfires, leading to current knowledge 
gaps that are stated in my--in detail in my written testimony.
    From the operational fire weather modeling standpoint, the 
main cause of unreliable forecasts is partly due to the 
oversimplification of the fire dynamics in models and model 
formulations and partly due to their design objectives. Most 
fire weather models, including the data layers, are designed to 
simulate wildfires in large spatial temporal scales tens of 
meters in space and hours in time. This may be appropriate for 
wildland fires in remote areas, but not for the current regime 
of fires we experience at WUI zones, as fire dynamics occur at 
flame scale, meters in space, and seconds in time.
    To enhance the current state of fire weather models, we 
need to invest in the cross-disciplinary initiatives to design 
and deploy sensors and observe and measure wildfire behavior at 
flame scale with unsaturated clean and high resolution data. 
Such continuous and high resolution measurements nationwide can 
also serve as a reliable situational awareness platform for 
first responders. We need to invest in multiscale laboratory 
infrastructures, controlled field campaigns, and rapid data 
collection teams nationwide to study wildfire dynamics at, 
again, flame scale. These measurements and observations are 
crucial for defining the canonical cases of wildfires and fire 
weather model development validation and verification.
    We need to invest in improving the quality, frequency, and 
resolution of the current data layers for fire weather models, 
leveraging the advances in scientific machine learning and AI.
    We need to establish infrastructures to centralize, 
standardize, and integrate wildfire-related datasets and 
provide access to the scientific community for model 
development. Support is needed for data collection efforts on 
the exposure of communities and infrastructures to wildfire 
risk, post-incident damages, and suppression activities and 
their effectiveness during events. These are key datasets for 
informing and calibrating the risk models, particularly in WUI 
zones.
    We must encourage and support community-driven and open-
source wildfire model development that co-produces with the 
relevant stakeholders. Co-production is essential for success 
of our models, as definition of success differs from one 
stakeholder to the other.
    The need for rigorously validated and reliable wildfire 
models is increasing, and accurate estimation of fire behavior 
across the scales has invaluable benefits for communities and 
stakeholders. My view is that the key to developing high 
performing models is the comprehensive application of 
fundamentals of fire behavior and safety sciences, leveraging 
insights from field and experimental observations at flame 
scale, along with efficient implementation of these findings 
with co-production in mind.
    Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Tohidi follows:]
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    Chairman Lucas. I again thank the witnesses for all your 
testimony, and I recognize myself for five minutes.
    Mark, from one Okie to another, welcome to the Nation's 
capital, and thank you for taking time to share our State's 
great work on this topic.
    I want to dig a little deeper on the value of collaboration 
and partnerships in the area of fire weather prediction, your 
experience in Oklahoma, and the development of the tools you 
mentioned in your testimony, who all needed to be at the table, 
including the Federal, State, and local parties. How did this 
come together?
    Mr. Goeller. It started out as a result of the 2005/2006 
dormant fire season in Oklahoma where we had multiple wildfires 
impacting the State, not only Oklahoma, but Texas and others in 
the Southern Great Plains. As a result of that episode that we 
had, there were a number of individuals that formed what was 
called the Southern Great Plains Wildfire Outbreak Group that 
included at the time individuals from the Texas Forest Service, 
now Texas A&M Forest Service, Oklahoma Forestry Services, 
National Weather Service Forecast Offices out of Norman, 
Amarillo, Abilene, Midland, and a number of others to start 
looking at that phenomenon that we experienced there in 
Oklahoma. And so as time went on, the partnership that 
developed between those offices, individuals, just continued to 
grow and really start to look into the weather dynamics of how 
that affected our firefighting response in this--in those 
States.
    The missions between our agencies and the National Weather 
Service, they meet in the protection of life and property. And 
so the one thing with the National Weather Service is, 
obviously, they have the tools to look at the weather, weather 
patterns, and so on and analyze such. We have the wherewithal 
to evaluate our wildland fuel conditions. And so the meeting of 
those two groups and agencies, along with State and other local 
emergency managing--and management personnel is what formed 
that, and it was critical to be able to do that to put us to 
where we are today.
    Chairman Lucas. One last question along that line. Can you 
share some of the lessons that you learned from other States 
who might be interested in developing similar tools for forests 
and communities?
    Mr. Goeller. One of the things that--the lesson learned as 
traveling around the United States and working on fires, it's a 
little bit different when you're involved with an incident 
management team assigned to a fire in Montana, California, 
Oregon, wherever it is. We do have Incident Meteorologists 
(IMET) through the IMET program with the National Weather 
Service that are assigned to the fire team, the incident 
command team.
    But, you know, the things that I would emphasize for 
lessons learned is for other State forestry agencies, local 
emergency management agencies to get to really working closely 
with their National Weather Service forecast offices. Look at 
the model that we employ in Oklahoma, look at the process that 
we went through. It's applicable anywhere in the United States. 
The same parameters that we have in Oklahoma would not 
necessarily work in other States, but the process would. And 
the research that went into what affects our weather systems 
would be absolutely employable in other places.
    Chairman Lucas. And to my other two witnesses, you know, 
it's not hyperbole to say that each of you conduct work that 
saves lives, directly saves lives, whether its citizens in 
affected areas or firefighters. Could you briefly touch on how 
you engage both first responders and everyday communities to 
get their input on your products or research and ensure that 
what you offer is useful to both groups?
    Mr. Peverill. Well, part of when we developed WeatherHive, 
we engaged with a lot of end users. Actually, when we 
participated in the NSF SBIR program, part of that was engaging 
with a tremendous number of end users, both first responders, 
public entities, as well as universities and other types of 
forecasting entities. And that was really part of the project 
from the outset. We really wanted to engage with users and make 
sure that the data that we were generating with the system 
would be very relevant for public applications and for weather 
forecasting applications. And the excitement that we saw during 
that process has really driven us to push even harder to get 
the technology into use with the public. And so that has been--
it's been part of our engagement since the beginning.
    Chairman Lucas. Absolutely. Doctor?
    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you for the question. This is exactly why 
we started the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at 
San Jose State University. And part of the mission that we have 
is to include the stakeholders, know their problems and what 
they are dealing with in facing wildfires and try to address 
those questions. For example, CalFire is also part of the 
center, and we hear their problems, and we try to tailor the 
models such that it can address those questions that they have. 
They want to know where the fire is exactly and what are the 
projections for the forecasts, and we are trying to address 
those.
    Chairman Lucas. Thank you. My time has expired.
    I now recognize the gentlelady from Oregon, Ms. Bonamici, 
for five minutes.
    Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all the 
witnesses for your expertise. I agree with the Chairman that 
the work you do helps to save lives and property.
    The climate crisis is certainly contributing to making 
wildfires more dangerous and frequent, putting lives and 
property and the environment at risk. And in my home State of 
Oregon in the Pacific Northwest, we're expected to see longer-
term hotter and drier weather, making our forests more 
vulnerable. Accurate fire weather and air quality forecasts are 
extremely important to our region, and I know NOAA needs to be 
able to continue this work and improve it, especially 
coordinating with other Federal and State agencies to support 
the rapid containment and suppression of wildfires.
    We're using some remote cameras right now, increasingly 
using those. We have about 93 remote cameras now spread over 64 
locations with a target of 110 cameras by the end of the year. 
In addition to digital fire outlooks, some of the programs have 
various levels of artificial intelligence. For example, 
Portland General Electric is now investing more than $20 
million in its wildfire mitigation and resiliency plan. And 
that includes high definition AI cameras to detect wildfires 
across the region.
    So I want to ask you, and I have a question for each of 
you. Mr. Peverill, as AI advances, how can we leverage the 
technology to better predict, locate, and battle fires? And how 
can we streamline and improve interagency coordination?
    Mr. Peverill. Well, the types of data that we're generating 
with our system is really what we call nowcasting. So instead 
of generating data that needs to be run through a lot of 
forecasting models, which takes time, we're actually directly 
sampling the conditions, which is very suited to use by 
artificial intelligence algorithms that would feed into first 
responders. It's really about delivering the data rapidly that 
can be used immediately for first responder planning 
activities. And I think directly collaborating between 
companies like us that are generating data and agencies like 
NOAA and CalFire that are used--that are involved with fire 
control directly is really critical.
    Ms. Bonamici. That's great. And, Dr. Tohidi, your work on 
modeling and the whole physics of fires, really interesting 
and, I think, important. How does your work intersect with what 
NOAA is doing? NOAA does, you know, the weather modeling, and 
then you're doing the sort of physics and modeling of how the 
firewall progress. How does that intersect, and how do you work 
together with NOAA on that?
    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you for the question. We use a lot of 
data layers that NOAA generates to initialize our fire weather 
models, and those are going to be used to set the initial 
conditions. And the models basically solve the conservation 
laws and do the forecasts. We also use a variety of different 
data layers from other institutions such as U.S. Forest 
Service, the fuel layers, fuel moisture, and, you know, some--
we have some aesthetic layers such as training typography that 
we also use. And that's basically the relationship that we have 
in the capacity of fire physics modeling.
    Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. Thank you for your work.
    And, Mr. Goeller, I want to ask about the timing of 
warnings. And you mentioned in your testimony something about 
what you call innovative and probabilistic approach that 
results in earlier warnings than the old red flag system. So 
after the wildfires caused some horrific damage in Oregon in 
2020, in September of 2022, our State requested access to 
Federal funds for wildfire response in preparation before the 
growth of the number of wildfires expanded beyond what the 
State could handle, you know, especially related to emergency 
declaration. I think this is important because that opens up 
Federal resources.
    So many fires were already burning. Vital staff and 
resources were stretched thin. And the State was concerned that 
without the Federal resources, they would not have what they 
needed to provide emergency power generation, communications, 
evacuation support, et cetera. So based on your experience, how 
can improvements in wildfire prediction enhance the mitigation 
but also prepare States with more adequate response efforts? 
And I'm really concerned about this timing because we did not 
get the emergency declaration. It's typically done after the 
fire happens, not always but after. So are there enough Federal 
resources available so States could use disaster mitigation to 
engage in suppression efforts before they happen? And how can 
the Federal Government improve our efforts to pre-deploy 
assets?
    Mr. Goeller. There's a lot to unpack there. The--there's a 
couple of things. One is in regards to timing issues is the 
ability to obviously model the fire weather that is impactful 
to your State, is looking at what conditions and parameters are 
involved when we have the situations that we experience large 
fire growth. In Oklahoma, the National Weather Service--the 
duties that--the work that was done was collateral to their 
normal duties, the bunch of dedicated individuals that put 
their heads together and started looking at the parameters that 
existed during those times that we had the high extreme fire 
danger and what weather systems caused that, and then the 
ability to look at that out three to seven days and even 
farther. And then as we got closer and closer to the day that 
was predicted, we would be able to really hone in where that 
would impact the State and then pre-deploy resources to support 
aggressive initial attack and keep the fire small.
    And so looking at Oregon's situation, it would be where you 
would need to have the Weather Service officials or whoever 
that might be look at those parameters that caused those 
conditions for large fire growth, to see those and predict them 
into the future.
    The declaration that you spoke of may be the Farm 
Management Assistance Grants (FMAGs) through FEMA (Federal 
Emergency Management Agency). There are two different things at 
work here. FMAGs are--have to be applied for when the fire 
emergency starts. It has to be when it's ongoing, and then that 
is a separate process, then deploying resources to a particular 
fire. So how can we best utilize our meager resources that we 
have? And I've fought fire in Oregon many times. It would be to 
know where those conditions are going to occur in advance and 
then have those resources prepositioned such as we do in 
Oklahoma and other States.
    Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. And I yield back. Sorry 
about that.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. 
Garcia, for five minutes.
    Mr. Garcia. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to 
thank the witnesses today, and thank you for this very 
important topic.
    I come from southern California, north L.A. County in a 
district which--it's probably the largest wildland-to-human 
interface in the Nation in terms of wildfire risks, and met 
with the Department of Forestry personnel leadership in SoCal, 
throughout California as well last week about the upcoming 
season. In the fall, it's bad for us with the way the winds and 
the environment changes in the fall through the winter. And 
fire season is almost becoming a year-round thing. We just had 
a fire yesterday. Actually it was put out, a 30-acre brush 
fire. And I want to, first of all, thank the firefighters and 
the folks at the Angeles National Forests, L.A. County for 
containing that one very quickly.
    And so it's been a good news story for California in terms 
of the water, right, the rain that we've gotten. And I--we see 
that as a good thing helping us mitigate the drought, but we 
also know that that beast on the horizon is all of those fuels 
drying out during the summertime, becoming effectively the BTUs 
that are going to burn in the fall. And so this is a problem we 
see coming. And so what you're doing is very important for us 
to save lives.
    And I do see these fire operations as literally combat 
operations. You know, God bless our firefighters out there on 
the frontlines, putting their lives on the line and saving 
homes. I myself have been evacuated from my home a couple of 
times in the last couple of decades because of these wildfires, 
so we can't support them enough. And because these are combat 
operations, you have to treat this almost like an entire kill 
chain from the predictive behavior of your threat. In this 
case, it's the fires. It's the brush. It's the prescribed burns 
to mitigate in advance of, but especially the predictive 
modeling that you're doing on the weather side that feeds 
information to the warfighter, in this case, the firefighters 
to make real-time decisions that ultimately save their lives 
and the lives of our constituents.
    So I can't thank you guys enough for doing what you're 
doing and want you to know that anything we can do to support 
you on the predictive modeling side, especially through NOAA 
and other agencies, don't hesitate to let us know. And we're 
happy to do that. We need all hands on deck right now. 
Especially with AI and some of the other capabilities coming 
online now, we probably aren't fully leveraging the 
technologies that are available to us. And while we can't 
replace the firefighter with a shovel and a hose, and, you 
know, in our case, we've got bulldozers out there doing the 
fire breaks and C-130's and DC-10's flying overhead literally 
like a combat operation. We can't replace those folks. We need 
more of those folks. We need to pay them better, treat them 
better, but also give them these tools.
    So to that end, I guess two questions. The first is with 
the fast-moving development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), 
and frankly even unmanned surface vehicles, ground-based 
vehicles, is there something that we can be doing and not just 
with these drone quadcopters that are five, you know, 10 pound 
widgets, but bigger class, you know, type two, type three class 
UAVs that are carrying sensors and infrared sensors, for 
instance, that can help feed information. And again, not to 
replace the firefighter on the ground, but to help be a force 
multiplier to give the firefighter information like where 
hotspots are, to give 24 hour persistence and surveillance 
overhead when maybe a helicopter flying over mountainous 
terrain is not the safest thing to do.
    What are you guys seeing, I guess, from an art of the 
possible, not necessarily state-of-the-art, but also 
incorporating the state-of-the-art and the art of the possible 
in terms of ConOps to support the firefighter in terms of these 
drones? And I shouldn't call them drones because everyone 
thinks these are smaller things, but there are larger, you 
know, 10-, 15-foot wingspan UAVs, and then surface-based 
tractors, et cetera, that are unmanned. But, Mr. Peverill, if 
you can--and frankly, anyone--if anyone wants to chime in here. 
From that technology perspective, what does the future of 
firefighting look like?
    Mr. Peverill. Well, one of the major barriers right now is 
actually the regulatory side, and I think what needs to be done 
is we need to take into consideration the relative level of 
safety for these types of operations, whether it's operating 
with something that's fairly benign like our Nano Drone here or 
some of the larger aircraft that can carry out--carry larger 
sensors or maybe even drop firefighting materials. You know, 
the Federal Aviation Administration needs to put a framework in 
place where they can consider the relative safety of what's 
being attempted by the unmanned aircraft, you know, safety to 
the public, and also take into consideration the public safety 
benefits because in many cases, you're talking about a--
deploying a technology, which has some level of risk, but the 
risk is far outweighed by the benefits to the public by what 
you can get out of it.
    Mr. Garcia. Would you say that the FAA is being too 
conservative right now in the regulatory--regulation of these 
things and almost adopting a zero risk mentality instead of 
leaning forward a little bit?
    Mr. Peverill. I think they are.
    Mr. Garcia. OK.
    Mr. Peverill. You know, the FAA is not currently tasked 
with taking into consideration the overall risk benefit. You 
know, they're tasked with maximizing the safety of aviation. So 
any amount of risk is often considered unacceptable, which is 
really not--you know, the appropriate way to carry about it if 
you want to deploy these advanced technologies in a reasonable 
amount of time.
    Mr. Garcia. OK. And I'm out of time, but thank you, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Michigan, Ms. 
Stevens, for five minutes.
    Ms. Stevens. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you to our 
witnesses. You know, we're here talking about wildfire 
detection and how to do it better, and I really appreciate the 
emphasis on interagency. I'm in Michigan, and it's been quite 
sobering over the last month because we haven't really 
traditionally been one of the States that has been subject to 
wildfire smoke. And this was wildfires that began in Canada in 
late May and took a month and the smoke spread down to our 
region and across many parts of the Midwest, leading to some 
head-scratching realities for folks, upticks in asthma 
incidences, hospitals being filled up.
    And I was wondering if any of you could talk about some of 
the interagency efforts vis-a-vis international relationships. 
We've got one of the great longstanding partnerships with 
Canada, an allied friendship with our neighbor to the north. 
But the question that was being posed at home is, is there 
anything that we can do to work with the Canadian Government to 
better detect fires? And are there existing mechanisms within 
our Federal Government, within NOAA or some of the other 
agencies that are stepping up that allow them to work with 
international governments? Go ahead, Mr. Goeller.
    Mr. Goeller. Yes, thank you. The--there's a couple of 
different things. Early in--within the last year we've had 
three different calls with Alberta to talk about the use of AI 
and some of the advances that Alberta has used in their 
province to detect wildfires and to evaluate smoke conditions 
and so on. And that is pretty exciting research in regards to 
us also, especially where we are starting to employ cameras to 
facilitate fire detection. So that is on the forefront and will 
be continued to be investigated.
    As far as international response, the United States has, 
through the cooperative agreements with the U.S. Forest 
Service, sent numerous resources to Canada beginning in early 
May to help them with their fire situation. And that was 
limited at the time to specifically Federal employees only, 
which the States have numerous resources that could also assist 
in those firefighting efforts. And just this week, we did 
receive some news from the U.S. Forest Service and through the 
Office of General Counsel that also State employees would be 
able to be deployed to Canada to assist them with their 
firefighting efforts. So opening up the door to allow more 
resources to go there to help them with their situation is 
beneficial also to help limiting the smoke that impacts the 
United States.
    Ms. Stevens. Yes, and particularly as we talk about 
standards, and we want to make sure that we're all speaking as 
best as possible from the same page of standards. And some of 
the research has shown that, since the beginning of this 
century, a million-plus acres of forests have burned every 
year. I think 2015 was the first year that we hit 10 million 
acres of forest fire. And just wondering, you know, Dr. Tohidi, 
you know, is there anything that we could better do as we look 
to detect, but as we also talk about prevention to bring into 
this conversation? And I know we're moving into this quarter 
21st century mark here, as we recognize, right, the planet is 
getting warmer, and we want to responsibly lead and put into 
place sustainability practices.
    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you for the question. There are a couple 
of things in my view that we can do. From the fire and weather 
modeling perspective, I think if we can improve the modeling 
such that it can represent a better--we can characterize the 
risk better and represent the risk in our communities better, 
that can be really helpful for the stakeholders to optimize the 
preparedness and mitigating actions that they are taking. Also, 
we need to invest in home hardening and prepare our communities 
for different scenarios that can happen. For them, there are 
some guidelines available that can--that communities can 
follow. But we also need social sciences to really educate our 
communities about these guidelines and also consider the 
vulnerabilities. You know, not all people in those communities 
are going to afford those guidelines and do these home-
hardening practices.
    So in my view, it becomes a game of optimization. And the 
best way to do it is to have a better characterization of the 
risk throughout the landscape and figure out where we need to 
do forest management, where we need to spend the money on 
community management and home hardening.
    Ms. Stevens. Thank you. And with that, Mr. Chair, I yield 
back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from New York, Ms. 
Tenney, for five minutes.
    Ms. Tenney. Thank you, Chairman Lucas and Ranking Member, 
for this hearing.
    And I represent New York's 24th Congressional District, so 
we're grateful for the Small Business Innovation Research 
program and also for the Mesonet program. I do have a question. 
I'd just like to jump right in. And I wanted to ask--and Ms. 
Stevens asked the question. We had obviously a lot of poor air 
quality from Canada coming in from the forest fires that we had 
there throughout our whole of upstate New York, which I 
represent. And I just had a question for you, Mr. Goeller 
first. Is there a way that we can detect or predict where 
forest fires will be worse in spreading in a--maybe a region 
that has a lot of extra underbrush or thatch? Is that something 
that we could use this technology to say this should be a 
warning area?
    You know, I have friends that are forest rangers, a number 
of them actually, who said you know, the only reason the 
Adirondacks doesn't go up in flames is because you're so--it's 
so humid because of the failure of the State of New York to 
really manage it properly. And I'm not talking about thinning. 
I'm talking about the thatch underneath and the underbrush. Is 
that something we could identify or detect in using the--this 
program?
    Mr. Goeller. Yes, there's--the fire environment is made up 
of three different--largely three different components, each 
with multiple facets underneath them, but it basically fuels 
weather topography. The weather portion of this we've discussed 
at great length, and the fuels is something that we need to 
look at not only in New York, but across the country. If you 
start to look at the forests across the United States, both 
either forests and rangeland both, if you start to evaluate 
where the fuel buildup is, and, as we have, it was mentioned 
earlier about lacking forest management. Anywhere that we don't 
practice active management, the fuels will continue to build. 
It's----
    Ms. Tenney. So would you say that this lack of management--
and I know there's a leave it untouched by mankind but, you 
know, obviously the Adirondacks are a beautiful place where, 
you know----
    Mr. Goeller. Absolutely.
    Ms. Tenney [continuing]. We hosted the Olympics. We have a 
lot of people that are engaged in winter sports up there, 
whether it's hiking and snowshoeing and all kinds of stuff. 
Would it be a good idea to invest in management of those 
forests using--you know, managing the thatch, managing the 
underbrush, and minimizing the risk of forest fire?
    Mr. Goeller. Yes, ma'am, it would be.
    Ms. Tenney. And is that something that you have an 
experience that New York is doing or not doing if you----
    Mr. Goeller. I do not have with New York. I can attest from 
personal experiences what we've just recently done in Oklahoma 
using hazard mitigation work to remove hazardous fuels in and 
amongst communities. Especially we recently completed a project 
in Washington County north of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Less than a 
month later after we removed the hazardous fuels, we had a 
wildfire impact the area, and when the fire made it to the area 
that was treated, the fire basically--I won't say went out, but 
it was such of a low impact that local firefighters were easily 
able to stop any spot fires that crossed the lines. And then 
also we saved numerous homes and prevented loss of life and 
property in that area where we did the hazard mitigation work.
    That's easily transferable. And a lot of States are 
starting to do the hazard mitigation work because it is 
important. We--it's much cheaper to do the mitigation work than 
it is to spend millions of dollars fighting the fires as they 
occur.
    Ms. Tenney. Well, thank you. That's a great answer.
    Mr. Peverill, Dr.--is it Dr. Peverill? Mr. Peverill, OK. 
Thanks for being selected by the Air Force for the Defense 
Innovation Unit prototype development. That's a great 
achievement. Just wanted to speak a little bit on the role of 
the SBIR and what--with WeatherHive. So in my district, our big 
concern is snow. We have a lot of lake effect snow coming off 
Lake Erie and also Lake Ontario. Everyone remembers, I'm sure, 
that we had 7 feet of snow alone in Orchard Park, which forced 
the Buffalo Bills to play in Detroit it was so bad. But we're 
just--I'm just questioning what kind of--what can we do is--
with that technology, would the WeatherHive be able to help us 
know what we're getting in--would that be effective in helping 
us mitigate and then solve that issue when it actually comes 
into play?
    Mr. Peverill. It could certainly help improve predictions. 
One of the things that's unique about WeatherHive is that we're 
able to really more accurately sample the boundary layer, which 
is the part of the atmosphere that's, you know, closest to the 
earth. And a lot of those type of effects that you're talking 
about, a lot of those mechanisms happen in this boundary layer 
region. And it's the least monitored area of the atmosphere. 
You know, the only data we have on that area is really mostly 
from ground sensors, which are very low and pretty spread out.
    Ms. Tenney. So are we doing that now? Are we able to do 
that?
    Mr. Peverill. We can do it with ground sensors. You know, 
people have towers. There's sensors on----
    Ms. Tenney. Is that technology we can use in our region in 
upstate New York?
    Mr. Peverill. Certainly. Yes. The WeatherHive system is 
designed to spread sensors all over that boundary layer 
atmosphere, and you can sense atmospheric gradients, you know, 
temperature, humidity, and pressure, and that can be used to 
feed into new types of forecasting models that can really 
more--much more accurately track and predict what's going to 
happen in those types of areas.
    Ms. Tenney. Thank you so much. I think I'm out of time. I 
yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from North Carolina, 
Mrs. Foushee, for five minutes.
    Mrs. Foushee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this 
Committee hearing today. And thank you to our witnesses for 
your testimony and for appearing before us this morning.
    I am proud that my district, North Carolina's 4th, includes 
the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station. It is an 
RTP- (Research Triangle Park-) based Federal research center, 
whose research on Federal wildfire and suppression expenditures 
was cited in last year's OMB (Office of Management and Budget) 
climate risk exposure assessment.
    Today, I would like to mention a little bit about their 
research. But first, I would like to thank all wildland fire 
first responders who make such tremendous sacrifice and 
commitment on the frontlines of what we are discussing today. 
My husband is a retired firefighter, having served for 31 
years, so I know firsthand the kind of dedication that this 
takes, and we commend them for their service.
    Mr. Goeller, Forest Service researchers in my district 
looked at available data from the U.S. Forest Service and the 
Department of Interior on wildfire area burned and Federal 
suppression expenditures to project and calculate the effect of 
climate on Federal lands burned and subsequent Federal 
expenditures in the mid- and latter half of this century. Their 
findings indicate that if this troubling trend continues, 
Federal spending on wildfire--on Federal lands is expected to 
rise by double or triple by the mid- to late century. To put 
this into context, Federal spending for the Forest Service and 
Department of the Interior would rise from a historical median 
of $2 billion per year currently to $5.7 billion per year by 
the end of this century.
    As the cost of wildland fire suppression continues to 
increase faster than inflation, how can the Federal Government 
better coordinate its efforts to protect Federal lands? I 
understand from reading your testimony that National 
Association of State Foresters helps to partner with Federal 
land management agencies through cooperative agreements and 
good neighbor authority. Can you please elaborate on this 
collaboration?
    Mr. Goeller. Yes, ma'am. We--one of the things that is 
critically important, as you mentioned, is the management of 
those Federal lands and the expenditures that occur as a result 
of wildfires is increasing. One of the things--if you look at 
the statistics for timber harvests on national forest lands 
over the--since 1940, the amount of timber harvested has 
decreased dramatically, beginning in the late 1980's. And 
there's well-published data that will support that in numerous 
publications that show what timber has been harvested. Again, 
as the management and the harvest decline in areas, the fuel 
continues to build. It's--that's just nature happening. And the 
ability for us to remove those products for forest products is 
one way to reduce the amount of fuel loading, it'll reduce the 
size of--the potential size of the fire.
    For the firefighters working on the frontlines, when we are 
able to utilize an area that's been treated either through 
forest management through timber harvest, hazard mitigation 
work, whatever it is, it's much easier for us to construct 
control lines. The fire is easier to control. And, typically, 
we have to go back to an area that--if you look at fire control 
and start thinking about, you know, why are we having trouble 
and why--where can we best stop a fire, it's where we have a 
favorable change in fuels, weather, topography.
    So talking specifically about fuel, the more that we can 
utilize the material out of the forested areas for products 
and--that reduces the fuel loading, it reduces the fire 
intensity, it allows us to more easily construct control lines 
and control the fires in those areas. Not only that, but we're 
locking up that material into--instead of releasing the carbon 
from the forest fires back into the atmosphere, we're locking 
that up into products that we use for our daily lives. And so 
there's the win-win there in regards to forest management and 
how that impacts not only our daily lives and the products that 
we use, but also for fire intensity and fire control and the 
expenditures on that.
    So I would encourage the use of forest management practices 
and forest, you know, timber harvesting to help as part of that 
puzzle to reduce the amount of expenditures for wildland fire.
    Mrs. Foushee. Thank you. And that's my time, Mr. Chair. I 
yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. 
Collins, for five minutes.
    Mr. Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    As someone from Georgia, I don't think we really experience 
wildfires. But I want to reflect on something that was 
personal, and that was the fact that in 2017 in November, we 
had a fire up in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. And fortunate and 
unfortunate, my wife and I had a home up there that we had sold 
earlier in that spring that was one of the homes that was 
consumed in that fire and burned.
    And I don't really know who I want to direct my question 
to, and it may be more personal, Mr. Chairman, than anything, 
but I'm just trying to learn where we had the failure at in 
that fire because we had people that lost their lives. And it 
spread so fast. So was there--is there a communications gap 
that we were missing that we've learned from that we've 
improved on? And the severity of that fire, is there something 
that, I don't know, NOAA or someone could have been doing to 
help locals understand just how bad that fire was and how quick 
it spread?
    Mr. Goeller. I'd be glad to answer that question. I was--
happened to be in Gatlinburg 2 weeks before the fire occurred 
and then also a couple of weeks afterwards. And we were there 
as a part of a National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) Risk 
Management Committee meeting, a meeting with the Great Smoky 
Mountain National Park, and also the Gatlinburg Fire Department 
and Pigeon Forge and a number of others to look at the 
potential for loss there in that area. Being that it's a resort 
community and many of those cabins and houses that were up in 
that fire area are traditionally rented and a lot of 
transitional folks going through there, the ability for them to 
understand what the potential was, was very low because of just 
numerous factors.
    The situation there in the Smokies, traditionally with 
their humidity, the rainfall, the climatological conditions 
that exist don't really contribute to a fire of that magnitude. 
But however, in November 2016 when the fire occurred, they were 
experiencing a long-term drought. Therefore, there in the Smoky 
Mountains, the fuels and terrain were just ripe for the loss 
that occurred from that incident, along with the fact that the 
evacuation information, the routes in and out, mostly single 
access, one way in, one way out that limited the evacuation 
possibilities for the folks that perished in that fire, that 
those were lessons learned that have been carried on in other 
places now because of that tragedy.
    The things that we can do now and the things that actually 
existed then were more to alert the public as to what the 
potential is in the areas that they either visit or live. The 
National Fire Protection Association has a site called Firewise 
USA that promotes the things that they can do personally, that 
individuals can do personally around their homes for defensible 
space, to protect their homes from wildfire approaching. The 
National Cohesive Wildfire Strategy is employed across the 
country in order to protect communities and make them more 
resilient.
    When we talk specifically about that fire and others that 
have occurred, it goes back to evacuation information, warning 
the public as to what they have. Gatlinburg at the time had a 
siren that was to be sounded when they needed to leave and to 
alert the public that there was an issue. And when that fire 
occurred and electricity went out, the siren died. And so, you 
know, there were multiple failures there that now, I'm sure, 
have been addressed that would allow the public to be more 
alerted and warned. We've taken those lessons back home to be 
able--we have an area that's very similar in southeast Oklahoma 
that we're--we've purchased evacuation signage and we're 
working with cabin owners to alert them what the possibility it 
is for those that come from the Dallas-Fort Worth area that 
have no idea what wildfire means to them in an area like that 
that is really intended in their minds just for recreation, but 
they don't realize the risk that they're putting themselves in.
    So State forestry agencies across the country are well 
aware of the situation, and we're doing a lot to alert not only 
the public, but those that come in for recreational 
opportunities, what the dangers are for wildfire. And we--and 
Georgia is a great supporter of fire across the United States. 
Georgia Forestry Commission, Tim Lowrimore is your State 
forester, he's great guy, and they do a lot of work with 
wildfire in Georgia and also support Florida and all the 
southern States. So thank you for them, and anything you can do 
to support them would be greatly appreciated.
    Mr. Collins. Thank you. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member from 
California, Ms. Lofgren, for five minutes.
    Ms. Lofgren. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And 
thanks to all of you for your excellent testimony, which I've 
read.
    Now, Dr. Tohidi, in your testimony, you highlight some of 
the concerning gaps in our knowledge about the behavior of 
wildfire at the wildland urban interface. Specifically, you 
mentioned that we have a poor understanding of the differences 
between released energy from structural burns versus vegetation 
clusters and that none of the current fuel layer inputs for 
operational models consider structures and urban developments 
as flammable. Can you elaborate on the knowledge gaps, what 
they mean about the--our ability to accurately model fires as 
it transitions from wildland to urban areas? And if you're able 
to address this--certainly not--we don't have wildfires in 
every part of the United States, but we have smoke in every 
part of the United States. And what kind of mix of fuel leads 
to toxic reactions to that smoke?
    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you for the question. To address the 
first part of your question on what are the knowledge gaps, as 
I stated in my written testimony, there are significant 
knowledge gaps in knowing how much energy is being released 
when you have a structure that is on fire and kind of scaling 
it up to the different layouts of the structures, different 
types of materials that, you know, structures that are--that we 
have in our communities and try to map that into the current 
fuel layers. So that's been challenging, and I think it needs 
more work.
    There are some works being done in different institutions. 
I think Berkeley Fire Lab is working on it and also Colorado 
State University. They are building risk platforms that can 
estimate the risk of wildfires going through the WUI areas. But 
we still need to know a lot about the specificity of the 
structures and how it translates to heat transfer processes and 
map it accordingly.
    To address the second part of your question in terms of how 
we can improve this, as I mentioned, a lot of the fire models, 
especially the operational ones that we use, are designed for 
the objective of predicting the fire behavior in the remote 
areas. So we have these large pixel sized fuel layers of 30 
meters by 30 meters. When it comes to wildland urban interface 
areas, we need to reduce it down to meters of scale, you know, 
the--or sometimes even smaller to have a really better 
understanding of the fire behavior in those areas. So if we can 
just work on these low-hanging fruits and improve the quality, 
resolution, and frequency of the data that currently goes to 
our operational models, we can improve our predictions and 
characterization of the risk by a lot.
    In terms of the smoke and which type of vegetation releases 
the--more toxins, it really depends on, first, the type of the 
vegetation and also the conditions of the fuel, the fuel 
moisture content that that vegetation has, how well it is being 
burned, what is the combustion efficiency of that? So it's 
different depending on the properties of the fuel and weather.
    Ms. Lofgren. Let me just get one more quick question for 
anybody who has an answer. The Wildlife Fire Risk Reduction Act 
is being reintroduced, and it asks the Federal Government to 
play a coordinating role. I was at a very interesting 
discussion at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space 
Administration) Ames several months ago with Federal agencies, 
local agencies, academic, including San Jose State, as well as 
private sector, and one of the issues that they identified was 
that we don't really have a way to distribute even the data 
that we have, put aside the data that we're missing. Do you 
have thoughts on how we might better coordinate the 
distribution and the standards for which the data is 
distributed? Any of you?
    Mr. Peverill. Sure, I think Federal collaboration on 
development of new standards for--and data platforms for the 
distribution of this data is very important. A lot of that's 
happening at the State level right now. I think that's the 
place where NOAA could do very well to build some new platforms 
and data standards around that type of information because 
there's really not a Federal standard for that currently.
    Ms. Lofgren. Thank you. My time has expired, Mr. Chairman. 
Thank you.
    Chairman Lucas. The Ranking Member's time has expired
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. 
Obernolte, for five minutes.
    Mr. Obernolte. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I 
would like to say a special thank you to you for conducting 
this hearing on a topic that is really critically important to 
me and the people that I represent. I represent a very rural 
district in California. As I'm sure everyone is aware, 
California has experienced some of the worst wildfire seasons 
in the entire history of our State just in the last couple of 
years. And unfortunately, that situation is predicted to get 
worse, not better, as climate change exacerbates the decreasing 
density of the fuel sources.
    I have had the unfortunate experience of being evacuated 
out of my community several times due to wildfire risk in the 
times that I've lived there. Last year, in fact, we got an 
aerial--an air show that we got to watch, you know, as--we had 
aerial assets put out a fire that came within about a mile of 
my community before it was finally stopped, so this is a really 
critically important topic for me.
    Mr. Goeller, thank you for the work that you're doing in 
Oklahoma. I was very interested in the parts of your testimony 
that concerned using technology to leverage the existing 
firefighting assets that we have. You were talking about its 
applicability to forecasting the severity of wildfires and the 
potential for them.
    But I'm--would like to talk about whether or not we've 
considered the use of technology to more quickly detect forest 
fires because, you know, we have tremendous capability now, 
aerial assets that we can dispatch very quickly to get to 
nascent fires. But if we detect them early and we have a flame 
front that's like an acre, we can use those assets to quickly 
put those fires out. If we don't detect them and we don't 
dispatch them until the flame front is tens of acres or 
hundreds of acres, then we can't do it with just aerial assets. 
We have to coordinate with ground-based assets. And that allows 
the time--the fire time to spread and get out of control.
    So I'm very interested in the possibility of using these 
new low-Earth orbit satellites that have the resolution to 
detect with thermal sensors a flame front of less than an acre 
and maybe pairing that with artificial intelligence to be able 
to distinguish between a large campfire and--you know, and 
lightning hitting a tree. Is that something that you've 
considered, and do you think that that's a worthwhile effort?
    Mr. Goeller. Absolutely. And we do utilize the GOES 16, 17 
satellites that the National Weather Service employs to do 
wildland fire detection now statewide. The--when we first 
started doing this in 2016, the satellite resolution, our 
detection capabilities was typically 2-mile accuracy, and now 
it's down to oftentimes within a 1/4 mile and even closer, and 
sometimes even able to detect a car-sized fire. So the use of 
those satellites and AI--with AI would be absolutely awesome to 
help you with detecting those fires while they are small and 
then the aggressive initial attack to keep them small when 
they're able to do something with them is critical.
    So yes, if you can--the one thing with the system that 
we're currently employing in Oklahoma and using the National 
Weather Service, that is available in a number of other States. 
Not every State is using that, as we are, our offices, forecast 
offices, Oklahoma, Texas, and now Kansas. Whenever they do 
detect a fire on the high to extreme days, they send us a text 
that shows us the location, shows us the nearest fire weather 
conditions from the Oklahoma Mesonet, which is a system of 
remote weather stations across the State. It gives us a map of 
where the fire is located and then also tells us how it was 
detected and some other basic information on that particular 
fire. We're able to get that information to the local 
responders, the emergency management, the fire departments, 
oftentimes before it's reported by the public to the 911 
dispatch centers.
    Not only that, but the forecasting that they're doing 
allows us to pre-position those resources because they base 
that on a probabilistic system as opposed to deterministic. And 
so as we see those systems developing, our forecasters, in 
conjunction with this Southern Great Plains Wildfire Outbreak 
Group, which would be transferable to your State as well, they 
show us within a certain percent, this is where the large fire 
occurrence can--will happen, 30 percent, 50 percent, and they 
dial that in to the point that we can have those resources pre-
positioned for those quick initial attack. We've seen a 
reduction in those large fires in those areas because of that 
focused effort that we've had. So yes, it's--would be easy, I 
believe, to do that with California as well.
    Mr. Obernolte. Right. Well, I think that, you know, a lot 
of the assets you're talking about are geostationary assets.
    Mr. Goeller. Yes.
    Mr. Obernolte. With low-Earth orbit, we have the potential 
of having much higher resolutions. And even with the drone 
technology that I know we've been testifying about, you know, 
I'm very encouraged about the possibility of having drone 
swarms, not sampling weather, but also detecting fires. I see 
I'm out of time. Let's continue to work on this issue. Thank 
you very much for your testimony. I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair 
recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Frost, for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Frost. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The recent Canadian wildfires are an example of the growing 
destruction of the climate crisis, a threat that transcends 
borders, can't build a wall around it. And it's not just that. 
These fires show how, when it comes down to climate change, 
we're all--we're not all on the same boat. Seniors, folks who 
have respiratory issues are part of the most vulnerable 
community when we talk about this. That even includes me as 
someone--like millions of Americans, I'm asthmatic, and I've 
been my entire life.
    People with breathing problems or people who may need help 
evacuating also need the earliest possible notice. Mr. Goeller, 
can you speak to the role NOAA plays in getting critical 
information about wildfires to the public and first responders?
    Mr. Goeller. Their mission with protecting lives and 
property in the cooperative agreement--well, not cooperative 
agreement--cooperation that we enjoy with them is what allows 
us to be able to get the information to the public in a very 
timely and fast manner. And so to be able to foster those 
relationships, it'd be--it's imperative that the local forestry 
agencies, Florida Forest Service, for example, to be able to 
get with the various National Weather Service forecast offices, 
get those relationships built, and also work on that warning 
criteria. The ability to transfer to the public the information 
regarding where fires exist or could exist is critical.
    Mr. Frost. Can you elaborate a little bit on the State--the 
current State and effectiveness of the fire hazard 
communication system?
    Mr. Goeller. The--it varies across the country. And I guess 
I really can't speak a whole lot to the way Florida works right 
now in regards to communicating the hazards to the public. But 
in other areas of the country, is it going to vary State by 
State and also how the State forestry agency, the local 
emergency State emergency management, local emergency managers, 
the relationship that they have with one another in 
communicating to the public, what the hazards are, either 
current or forecast. So, again, it's going to be incumbent on 
the agencies to work together to improve that process.
    Mr. Frost. Yes, just a few weeks ago here in D.C. when the 
smoke was incredibly thick, you know, I had my staff work from 
home, but not many people have that choice. And folks had to, 
you know, commute through the toxic yellow haze. Another group 
of important workers who face such health threats are first 
responders and firefighters. Mr. Goeller, can you speak to the 
challenges firefighters face in their career and how we in 
Congress can better support their efforts on protecting others, 
especially when it comes down to wildfires?
    Mr. Goeller. Yes, we in--the National Wildfire Coordinating 
Group has a Smoke Committee that has been established and has 
been for a number of years, and the Smoke Committee looks at 
the various aspects of the wildland fire smoke. Obviously, it's 
a lot different for vegetative material and the smoke produced 
and especially now that we have to also address the smoke 
issues related to the wildland urban interface when homes burn 
cars and so on. It's a much different picture than we used to 
have back in the early days of firefighting here in the United 
States.
    And so the Smoke Committee does a lot of work in regards to 
not only predicting the smoke impacts to communities, the 
notification of communities when a large fire exists. 
Typically, it's those that are what we used to call campaign 
fires, those that lasted for weeks, weeks on end, and how those 
would impact various communities across the--not only the 
State--the local area, but also the State as well.
    The--we have now air resource advisors that are put in 
place and smoke monitoring equipment to be able to provide the 
public with the most accurate information possible in regards 
to particulate matter and what would impact their lives on a 
day-to-day basis and when to issue those warnings when they 
need to stay inside and so on.
    Mr. Frost. Thank you.
    Dr. Tohidi, better forecasting means faster evacuations. 
I'm curious how we can more quickly deploy new and effective 
promising modeling.
    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you for the question. In my view, the 
fastest way is to really build on what we currently have. We 
have models that are operational, and they are working with 
some level of uncertainty. But if we can reduce the uncertainty 
in the predictions of these current models, then we'll probably 
have a better understanding of the risk and also do a better 
job on forecasting.
    So the highest priority from the modeling standpoint would 
be to improve the resolution quality and frequency of the data 
layers that goes into these models and improve them. And then 
if we can invest on the observational campaigns, the 
experimental campaigns to better observe these processes, free 
from contamination from suppression activities, then we can 
have a better understanding of the physics, and then we can 
implement them in the models.
    Mr. Frost. Yes, thank you all for your lifesaving work. I 
yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. 
Weber, for five minutes.
    Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Goeller, I guess these are for you. I came in late. Is 
it Geller or Goeller?
    Mr. Goeller. Goeller.
    Mr. Weber. OK. Forgive me if some of this is redundant. I 
was in another markup.
    Regarding Mesonet, we know it's in Oklahoma. I think you 
said in your testimony it's in other States. How many other 
States?
    Mr. Goeller. I'm not exactly sure how many other States 
employ a system like that.
    Mr. Weber. OK. And how long has Mesonet been in existence?
    Mr. Goeller. I'm going to say since the late 1990's maybe 
or early 1990's. I'm not exactly sure, but 20 years.
    Mr. Weber. OK. And there's--according to what I read, 
there's 100 weather--it uses basically 100 weather--but it's 
not in Texas, right?
    Mr. Goeller. No, I don't----
    Mr. Weber. Nothing you know about like that in Texas?
    Mr. Goeller. I don't believe so.
    Mr. Weber. OK.
    Chairman Lucas. It is kind of amazing, actually.
    Mr. Weber. Well, I know because things are bigger and 
better in Texas. I can't believe that.
    But--so you say it's been there about 20 years. Are they--
are those 100 weather stations, are they--do you know how 
they're positioned? Are they in concentric overlapping zones or 
those zones where they--those weather stations are--just 
happened to be there already?
    Mr. Goeller. They were deployed across State. Every county 
in the State has at least one or two.
    Mr. Weber. OK.
    Mr. Goeller. They're internet-accessible 24 hours a day. 
They update every five minutes. And that gives us the ability 
for--as fire managers--you know, prediction of fire weather is 
critically important----
    Mr. Weber. Sure.
    Mr. Goeller [continuing]. To know what's coming, and the 
Mesonet stations give us the ability to look during a fire 
event to see what the--how the weather is changing across the 
State and when it will impact the actual fire location. So we 
transition from, say--depending on the National Weather Service 
to tell us--they still do, don't get me wrong. And there's 
still a critical piece of that puzzle to give us the advanced 
warning of weather systems, frontal passages, and so on. But it 
also--the--just the general--the guy out in the field working 
on the fire can pull up his phone, iPad, and look at those 
Mesonet stations and see how the relative humidity, the wind 
speeds, the temperature will be changing throughout the course 
of the day and see when that'll impact their fire.
    Mr. Weber. I got you. And maybe you may or may not know the 
answer to this. How many counties in Oklahoma--and maybe that's 
a Chairman question--number of counties in Oklahoma?
    Mr. Goeller. Seventy-seven.
    Mr. Weber. Seventy-seven? Well, there's 254 counties in 
Texas, you know, I think--we said Texas is bigger. I don't know 
if we could get one--all 254 counties----
    Mr. Goeller. I hear that a lot.
    Chairman Lucas. A century ago, we picked up three counties 
from Texas in a Supreme Court ruling, so just a side note.
    Mr. Weber. Yes.
    Mr. Goeller. Yes.
    Mr. Weber. Well, don't get any more ideas because those 
days are over.
    But the reason--is NOAA very proactive in doing this, in 
trying to get other States and more counties involved or do you 
know?
    Mr. Goeller. Well, NOAA is--for the Mesonet, it's Oklahoma 
State University, University of Oklahoma, and Oklahoma 
Climatological Survey. Those are the three entities that 
actually began the Mesonet. It was a collaborative effort 
between those. And so as far as NOAA in Texas, I could not 
address that.
    Mr. Weber. OK. Just curious. And is there any kind of cost 
estimate involved as to what the system costs or what it does 
cost?
    Mr. Goeller. I don't know the answer to that.
    Chairman Lucas. It's a bargain.
    Mr. Weber. Oh, it's a bargain, absolutely.
    Mr. Goeller. It is a bargain.
    Mr. Weber. And if you--and I see where you actually had the 
background of going to work for the--was it the U.S. Forest and 
Wildlife in 1980?
    Mr. Goeller. Um-hum.
    Mr. Weber. So you were 10 years old when you started, 
right?
    Mr. Goeller. That's correct.
    Mr. Weber. So I guess you're--you've watched it for a long 
time. All that said, you've been paying attention a long time. 
How would you rate the success rating of this system? Is it 
good, bad, better, the best thing out there since sliced bread? 
Give us your thoughts.
    Mr. Goeller. The Mesonet system?
    Mr. Weber. Um-hum.
    Mr. Goeller. It is a great tool, fantastic tool. And as we 
bring resources into Oklahoma to help us during some of our 
fire emergencies and other fire behavior folks and other 
firefighters, they are amazed that we have this available to 
us, and they wish that they had it in their State as well.
    Mr. Weber. Anything better in the country?
    Mr. Goeller. Not that I've seen.
    Mr. Weber. Not--you haven't seen anything better.
    False alarms, let's move over to false alarms. One of the 
questions was how false alarms or even bad information--how do 
false alarms or bad information impact the allocation of 
firefighting resources and general response? Have you--have 
we--has that system experienced false alarms? Can you give us 
examples? And how do you respond to those?
    Mr. Goeller. You know, typically, we do have false alarms, 
yes, but it's not as many as you might think. And it really has 
not caused us a tremendous amount of impact that hurts our 
system or causes us to miss one fire because of a false report 
somewhere else.
    Mr. Weber. OK. Mr. Chairman, I'm going to yield back 10 
seconds.
    Chairman Lucas. I would simply note to my colleague from 
Texas that Lynda Lucas runs the farm. She is the herdsman, and 
I never call home without checking Mesonet first to see what 
her attitude is going to be.
    The gentleman's time has expired. The Chair now recognizes 
the gentlelady from Colorado, Ms. Caraveo, for five minutes.
    Ms. Caraveo. Thank you, Chairman Lucas, and Ranking Member 
Lofgren as well. And I appreciate our witnesses today taking 
time to discuss fire weather prediction capabilities, a very 
important issue in Colorado where we have experienced some of 
our largest wildfires in State history in the last five years.
    I have to start off by sharing that I recently visited NIST 
(National Institute of Standards and Technology) at their 
Boulder campus, and I had a wonderful time learning about some 
of the projects that they have been working on, including their 
work on leveraging VR (virtual reality) tech to help first 
responders such as firefighters digitally map out areas 
affected by fire. These types of technological advancements 
help firefighters suppress wildfires and in turn save lives and 
properties. But it also helps limit the health impacts on 
firefighters by limiting their exposure and giving them more 
information as they navigate fire-affected areas.
    Mr. Goeller, in your testimony, you touch on the State Fire 
Assistance and Volunteer Assistance Programs. Based on your 
experience, can you discuss some of the health impacts that 
firefighters specifically face and how those impacts could be 
mitigated?
    Mr. Goeller. Some of the health impacts that we face is the 
environmental impacts from not only the fire itself, but also 
working in the extreme conditions that we must fight fire in. 
During a drought, during summer months when we have high 
temperatures, the problems that are--usually that we face are 
heat stress type--heat-related injuries, those that we have to 
try to mitigate through messaging to our firefighters on 
hydration and taking care of themselves, cooling, and so on.
    There's a lot of work done by the NWCG Risk Management 
Committee and the National Interagency Fire Center and the Fire 
Lab in Missoula, Montana, that has--that looks at the stress on 
firefighters and what we can do to reduce that as they work 
during those hot months. But also in many areas of the country, 
especially in the South when we fight fire during the winter 
months, we have to work in extreme cold as well. And some of 
our heavy equipment operators that have to operate a piece of 
equipment during very cold temperatures, especially the open 
cab, the older dozers, it's extremely hard on them. Those are 
the environmental impacts of smoke.
    Again, the NWCG Smoke Committee has done a lot of research 
on the impacts to the lung functions. The one thing that is 
somewhat of an issue for us is the fact that we don't have a 
lot of information regarding firefighter mortality after they 
retire on what happened. You know, there's a lot of information 
there that we're not party to that we don't have accessible to 
us, and so to understand the long-term impacts of smoke 
exposure to wildland firefighters has been a little bit 
difficult to ascertain. We know what the immediate impacts are 
and how to mitigate those, but as far as long term, that 
research is going to be--is ongoing and--to try to figure out 
what that would be, so--thank you.
    Ms. Caraveo. Well, I'm certainly glad that that research is 
ongoing. We need to know the health effects on the men and 
women that save property and lives, especially in places like 
Colorado.
    Switching gears, I would like to discuss fired hazard 
communications. Many of us have focused on that today. So this 
question may also be for you, Mr. Goeller. Like many of my 
colleagues, I believe that it is critical to have effective 
communication systems to ensure first responders and residents 
can act quickly. And like many families in my district, I come 
from a bilingual household, and many of my constituents are in 
households that really prefer one language over English to be 
frank. Do you know of any current State--the current State and 
effectiveness of multilingual hazard communications for 
families like those?
    Mr. Goeller. I can't speak to the effectiveness. I do know 
that when we're in an area that are public information officers 
and we're working in an area that has various languages that 
are spoken there, that we do employ multiple language public 
information releases to try to impact--or try to inform the 
public. You know, when we're in an area like Arizona and 
Spanish is the primary language, we do a lot of media releases 
and so on in Spanish. In Oklahoma, I've done probably more 
interviews with Telemundo and some of the other Spanish-
speaking media outlets than sometimes I do with the traditional 
media outlets in Oklahoma. And so it does--we do pay attention 
to that fact and try to get that information out as we can, 
depending on what areas of the country that we're working.
    Ms. Caraveo. Well, I certainly appreciate all of your work.
    And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. 
Miller, for five minutes.
    Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member.
    First, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record a 
letter from the Competitive Carriers Association regarding the 
importance of wireless service and wildfire detection and 
mitigation.
    Chairman Lucas. Seeing no objection, so ordered.
    Mr. Miller. Thank you. Thank you very much, and thank you 
to our witnesses for being here today. It's great to have you.
    Question for Mr. Goeller. I'm hearing more and more of this 
term fire year instead of fire season, recognizing that we are 
starting to see fires at unusual times and unusual places. The 
current wildfire smoke issues we have seen all the way in Ohio 
from fires in eastern Canada are a prime example of just that. 
We've never seen that before. Can you talk about the prevalence 
and nature of wildfire in different parts of our country? Is 
wildfire the same in the East as it is in the West? Are we 
seeing more fire? And why is that?
    Mr. Goeller. The difference--the fire year term has come 
about because we do actually fight fire across the country for 
the entire year. The southern United States, for example, our 
fire season is from January first through December 31st, but we 
break that into two distinct seasons, the dormant season and 
the growing season. Other parts of the country where snowfall 
and snowpack limits firefighting during the winter months, it's 
a little different. But as you look at the United States and 
how fire transitions across the country during the course of 
the year, the fire season, if you wanted to call it that, it 
moves around. As--earlier, one of the Representatives from 
California mentioned October, November that in southern 
California is when the change in the seasons there affects the 
fire growth, the winds change, and so on. So we are very aware 
and have been for a number of years on how fires move across 
the country and where those impacts will be.
    The one issue that we face sometimes is when we start to 
see weather impacts, drought in various parts of the country 
and some--when the drought impacts two or more areas at once, 
it starts to become an issue as far as resource deployment. So 
those are things that we constantly are watching and seeing how 
we can do that. Fire is different in various parts of the 
country, difference in fuels, difference in what burns. 
Southern United States, especially along the coastal areas, we 
look--palmetto, gallberry, things like that, that are waxy and 
have--they're volatile fuels Florida, Georgia, South Carolina 
going up across the coastal areas. But as you move inland, we 
start to transition into pine fuels, hardwoods, and so on.
    And so the fire managers in the various States are well 
aware of what their primary fuels are, when their fires are 
most active, and what they need to do in terms of resource 
deployment and bringing in--when they need to bring in resource 
to supplement their State agencies or the Federal agencies to 
be aware of and be prepared for any fire response. The Federal 
agencies, they call it the fire severity. They bring in 
severity resources to pre-position to be ready. States, we use 
our forest fire compacts to do that. And so as one area of the 
country is burning and the other is not, then we support each 
other.
    And so, again, it all is based on fuels, fuel conditions, 
the management of the forested areas, the range lands. It's all 
a very complex issue that we constantly are trying to maintain 
our situational awareness of where those issues will occur.
    Mr. Miller. Thank you for that detailed answer. It's much 
appreciated.
    Mr. Peverill, are there obstacles to the widespread 
implementation and use of drone technologies? How might the 
government facilitate the use of these technologies? Are there 
regulatory hurdles that you could see happening because of it?
    Mr. Peverill. Absolutely. You know, the regulatory 
framework currently doesn't allow advanced operations of drones 
like we were talking with our system. You know, there's no path 
in place for us to have widespread use of a system like 
WeatherHive nationally. Those have been in development for 
years now at the FAA, but they have yet to produce a real 
framework to do that. And as I mentioned before, I mean, it's 
really important for them to put in place a system that 
considers both the risk of a given operation when planning the 
method by which you allow permission and also consider the 
public safety benefits, which they don't currently do. You 
know, this is a system that has significant public safety 
benefits and minimal, if any, safety implications once 
implemented properly.
    Mr. Miller. Thank you for that. I have a couple more 
questions, but I'm going to submit them for the record.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back. Thank you very much.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Pennsylvania, Ms. 
Lee, for five minutes.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our 
panel of witnesses today for your time and your expertise on 
this subject matter.
    Back home in western Pennsylvania, we don't experience 
wildfires, but that doesn't spare our communities from the 
significant and far-reaching effects that these disasters have. 
Large amounts of smoke, pollutants, and particulate matter are 
released into the air, having severely detrimental effects on 
air quality. This poses health risks to those throughout my 
district, which is already known to have some of the worst air 
quality in the Nation. Wildfire smoke can exacerbate 
respiratory illnesses and contributes to smog, leading to 
various health problems for vulnerable populations such as 
children, the elderly, and individuals with pre-existing 
respiratory conditions such as asthma, bronchitis, or COPD 
(chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) of course.
    The raging wildfires in Canada are still burning and have 
been for weeks. The smoke from these fires have led to several 
code red air quality alerts, which indicates unhealthy levels 
of pollution across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Not too 
long ago, many of us woke up to the scenes of hazy orange skies 
akin to those in sci-fi movies. Residents were advised to 
frequently check their local air quality through resources such 
as airnow.gov, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental 
Protection, and the Allegheny County Health Department. The 
work that agencies and governments at all levels do to protect 
our communities are invaluable, and every tool at our disposal 
must be utilized to support them.
    So we can't deny that growing frequency and severity of 
wildfires are influenced by climate change. While we're here 
today to discuss pathways forward to improve quality, U.S. 
distribution and accessibility of fire weather data, real 
solutions will lie in addressing the root causes of climate 
change. Implementing effective mitigation and adaptation 
strategies will be crucial in preventing future wildfires and 
reducing their impact. Unprecedented extreme weather events are 
becoming alarmingly normal. This is not sustainable for Earth 
or humanity. If we don't stand up now to change how we interact 
with this planet, there will be nothing for future generations 
to inherit.
    So, Dr. Tohidi, how is climate change affecting how we 
train and educate emergency response officials in the field? 
And can you highlight specific changes that you have 
experienced in academia?
    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you for the question. I can answer this 
to the best of my knowledge. I'm not an expert in educating 
first responders. But in San Jose State University, we have a 
new minor called wildfire minor, and the College of Science 
hosts this, so the students who go through this minor, they get 
familiarity with five other indices that are available, and 
they can assess the situations, the atmospheric situations that 
are conducive to fire, and they can transition some of this 
knowledge to the work that they do. If some of them choose to 
be first responder, that will be very helpful for them.
    And in terms of the education, we definitely need to do 
more work on workforce development in this area because the 
more awareness we have about the problems that we are dealing 
with and the more awareness that we have, the urgency of the 
problem, the better answers we can have for them.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you. Mr. Peverill. What opportunities exist 
for input from private citizens for quicker wildfire response 
and improve fire hazard communication?
    Mr. Peverill. Well, I think better access to data about the 
boundary layer, you know, the areas that impact movement of 
wildfires, I think would significantly enhance the ability to 
inform the public about where they're going to go. You know, as 
you mentioned, the air quality is a major challenge. It's 
obviously in the--you know, in the air the public is breathing. 
But being able to study the boundary layer using tools like 
drones and other systems will really allow us to better predict 
and influence urban planning around air quality.
    Ms. Lee. Yes, your company provides products like--that 
utilize robotics and AI to create solutions to problems. Could 
you share what you think the potential is for integrating data 
and solutions from fields like agriculture into fire weather 
data to utilize cross-cutting approaches?
    Mr. Peverill. Yes, well, you know, we were talking about 
the Mesonet system. It's a great example of a data platform 
tool that's been used to inform fire weather for decades. A 
system like ours is sort of like a Mesonet enhanced. You know, 
you can gather data throughout the atmosphere between Mesonet 
stations and really deliver a much more dense matrix of data 
that can be used to enhance predictions. You know, that sort of 
data source really doesn't exist right now. It isn't available 
to researchers, and it isn't available to inform public policy 
and, you know, planning tools.
    Ms. Lee. Thank you. That's my time. I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Virginia, Mrs. 
McClellan, for five minutes.
    Mrs. McClellan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, 
for planning this hearing, which, as we've heard, is very 
timely, given the experiences we had recently with the 
wildfires. And while we have some familiarity with wildfires in 
Virginia, I don't think we've ever had smoke travel from Canada 
before, or at least not in my recent memory. And we know that 
that as we continue, the air quality impacts that we saw that 
were historic and unprecedented are probably going to be much 
more prevalent going forward.
    And as we've touched on but I want to explore a little bit 
deeper, you know, I'm concerned we're going to continue to see 
increasingly severe wildfire years as a result of climate 
change, which is exacerbating heat and drought conditions and 
making it much easier for fires to catch and spread.
    So, Dr. Tohidi, could you describe in a little more, you 
know, specifically, the ways in which climate change has 
impacted fire dynamics?
    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you for the question. Yes, the climate 
change effects and the way they are affecting the fire dynamics 
or the regime of fires that we see these days is a confluence 
of a lot of different parameters. But the general consensus is 
that the climate change leads to prolonged droughts, warmer and 
hotter temperatures, and that leads to drier fuels and lowers 
the fuel moisture content in our landscape and really builds up 
the platform for any ignition with any source that can happen. 
And then it goes from a single ignition point to large 
weather--fire weather systems that we have these days. So these 
are the main, you know, factors that we all know and there is 
evidence for it.
    Another factor that climate change makes an impact on is 
the soil moisture. Soil moisture is also known to be a very 
important parameter in the health of the biological systems 
that we have throughout the landscape and also having some 
correlations with the fuel moisture and how the fire dynamics 
changes.
    Mrs. McClellan. Thank you for that. And do you see any 
updates to data collection or modeling needed to account for 
these changes, or do you think the modeling is OK as-is?
    Dr. Tohidi. The modeling, we do need to do a lot more in 
modeling perspective. And one of the avenues that we can 
improve the current State of the models is exactly that. We 
need to address the quality, resolution, and frequency of the 
data layers for these current models that we have. We do need 
to better understand the dynamics of the fire at different 
scales. As you know, fire happens to be a multiscale process, 
starting with the flame at very small scales and then how it 
grows to be large weather systems such as pyroCbs. We still 
have a lot to learn and fill that knowledge gap, so yes.
    Mrs. McClellan. Thank you. And touching on community 
resiliency a little bit, Mr. Goeller, could you discuss steps 
that Congress could take to better support vulnerable 
communities in anticipating wildfire scenarios and preparing 
mitigations?
    Mr. Goeller. Yes, one of the things that we can do, one, 
the vulnerable communities, is the hazard mitigation, removing 
fuel. We've talked about climate change and the effects of 
climate change. One thing we can do to reduce the severity and 
impact of wildfires and how much smoke is generated and how 
much particulate matter is to remove fuel. And right now, our 
fuel buildup in the forested areas of the United States and in 
the rangeland areas where management has been largely reduced 
over the years--there's a number of reasons for that. There's 
cultural changes. There's changes in the demographics. The 
family farms aren't as prevalent as they used to be. We've got 
people moving into the city areas, and therefore, a lot of land 
is relatively unmanaged and left alone just to grow and produce 
fuel, whether it be the rangelands or the forest lands of the 
United States. And the communities that are out in and amongst 
those areas, the hazard mitigation work that can occur is 
critical to protect those communities from the impacts not only 
from fire directly impacting or directly impinging into those 
areas, but also to limit the smoke generated from any wildfires 
in the areas that would cause them to have issues with that. 
And so addressing the one component in the fire environment 
that we do have the wherewithal to do is working on fuel 
reduction work and doing that ahead in advance of fire 
occurrence.
    Mrs. McClellan. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair next recognizes the gentleman from California, 
Mr. Issa, for five minutes.
    Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I'm going to follow up on that. Since--you're in Oklahoma, 
right?
    Mr. Goeller. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Issa. Would you say you do a pretty good job of brush 
removal?
    Mr. Goeller. We're doing a lot better job. The one 
problem--the one thing that we have in Oklahoma is mostly 
private land, and the--there's some difficulty in addressing 
those issues on private lands where the landowner really does 
not want to do anything. And so getting the word out, the 
information to them on what they can do and what we can do for 
them, we do have some grants now available to us and through 
the Federal Government and also some of the State things that 
we're doing to affect the fuel work on private lands.
    Mr. Issa. But, as you know, California is the opposite. We 
are mostly public lands.
    Mr. Goeller. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Issa. Native American, Federal, and State. And we don't 
do a very good job. We don't use the funds to clear the brush, 
just the opposite. We can't get a permit to do it most of the 
time, right?
    Mr. Goeller. That is an issue, yes.
    Mr. Issa. And the smoke goes from west to east, so the fact 
is that our annual fires, because we don't abate the brush, in 
fact, affect most of the rest of the country with the flyover 
smoke.
    Mr. Goeller. We do have issues, yes. And some of the things 
that you could do, some of the things Congress could do would 
be to make that a little easier for those public land, U.S. 
Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, others to be able to 
affect that hazard mitigation work on Federal lands to reduce 
the amount of----
    Mr. Issa. Would you----
    Mr. Goeller [continuing]. Fire danger.
    Mr. Issa [continuing]. Suggest that we preempt State law in 
this case because it flies over other States when we find ways 
to stop it on a State level?
    Mr. Goeller. I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question.
    Mr. Issa. California seems to stand out for a reason, and 
that is that you go into our courts, you get one after another 
delays. I was asking do you think that that Committees here in 
Congress should consider, on behalf of the other 47 lower 48 
States that we should potentially preempt the State of 
California from its willingness to not clear brush as an 
Oklahoman where the smoke flies over you?
    Mr. Goeller. Yes, fortunately, our wind speeds, typically, 
we don't have many issues for very long in Oklahoma. It's 
usually in Kansas or Nebraska by the time that it starts to be 
a problem. But that aside, you know, there are things that we 
need to do across the country. One, you know, when you do have 
regulations in one State that are more stringent than what the 
Federal Government offers, they have to look at what is the 
impact of that to the State? Is it something that we--they can 
do to reduce those impacts from wildfire, from smoke issues, 
and whatnot? Are they causing more harm than they're doing good 
by the regulations that they impose? And so, no, I would not 
suggest that the Federal Government come in and tell the States 
what to do. But again----
    Mr. Issa. But a common 50-State standard would probably 
make sense, at least as to how you go about it and how long it 
takes to get a permit?
    Mr. Goeller. Are you talking about for burning or for----
    Mr. Issa. Well, for clearing brush. You know, California 
uses the Environmental Protection Act, Endangered Species Act, 
and so on. They use it to go further than the Federal 
Government does in your home State. Well, look, enough about 
California. Let me ask you another question. Direct hire 
authority for firefighters, do you want to give us the idea of 
how important it is to be able to ramp up and do this without 
going through a long process?
    Mr. Goeller. It's--it is a great thing to have that direct 
hire authority. We--the number of wildland firefighters across 
the country, whether it be State or Federal, has diminished 
greatly over the years. And part of the issue is the--not--is 
the pay. You know, the--nowadays, a lot of wildland 
firefighters could make more money doing something else, 
working at just about anywhere. And so we have been focusing on 
increasing wildland firefighter pay, which would go a long ways 
to help that.
    We've lost a number of hotshot crews over the years. Our 
crew strength has diminished greatly across the country. You 
know, we're--the 20 person crews, not only type one, type two, 
type two IA crews has continually decreased over the years, so 
our ground firefighting efforts has greatly been diminished. So 
direct hire authority would be great.
    Mr. Issa. OK. Mr. Chairman, I think I got my two points 
across. And I appreciate the entire panel. I yield back.
    Chairman Lucas. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from North Carolina, 
Ms. Ross, for five minutes.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Chairman Lucas and Ranking Member 
Lofgren, for holding this hearing. And thank you to the 
panelists for joining us today.
    Canada was not the only place facing wildfires in June. In 
North Carolina, tens of thousands of acres of the Green Swamp 
nature preserve burned, causing road closures and air quality 
issues in the southeastern portion of our State. The number of 
annual wildfires in North Carolina has steadily increased over 
the past two decades, and it's imperative to understand the 
behavior of wildfires to effectively predict where they will 
start and how they will behave.
    My first question is for Dr. Tohidi, and you touched on 
this a little bit about the gaps that we might have in wildland 
forest fire model modeling. So could you go back to those gaps 
and just list them out for the Committee? And then also let us 
know whether investing more in this modeling would be helpful.
    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you for the question. Yes, in terms of 
the major gaps that we have, as I alluded to, one of the main 
knowledge gaps that we have currently in dealing with wildland 
urban interface fires is that we don't have a physics-based 
representation of how these fires go from the intersection of 
the wildland to the communities and how they spread. This 
transition to the community is called urban conflagration. So 
if you can invest in studies that can improve our understanding 
of the dynamics and the physics for this process, we can 
implement that in models and improve our forecasting 
capabilities for the communities.
    The other area that we can do improvement and we are doing 
improvement in San Jose State University is to provide physics-
based representation for one of the mechanisms of wildfire 
spread called firebrand showers. These are degeneration and 
transport of tiny embers that are still burning and land and 
accumulate part of the main fire front. They ignite another 
fire, which we call spot fires. This is a process that is 
arguably the most complex and fastest mechanism of fire spread. 
And there has been some improvements, but we need to do more 
studies on how we can come up with a physics-based 
representation of this process in our operational models. The 
complexity of this process, and also the computational costs 
has been the primary deterrence for us to consider in our 
operations.
    Also, we need to invest in experimental and observational 
campaigns at flame scales, such that we can observe the 
evolution of fire from the single ignition point to larger 
scale flame topologies, as well as the interactions with the 
boundary layer and basically evolving to becoming larger 
weather systems. These are the main things that I can elaborate 
on.
    Ms. Ross. OK, great. Thank you. And as we've heard from 
you, responding to wildfires is complex, and critical equipment 
and personnel must be moved to fire so that they can be brought 
under control before they grow. Mr. Goeller, can you expand on 
the considerations that must be made when responding to fire 
detections? And do you utilize any NOAA products when managing 
wildfire response efforts?
    Mr. Goeller. Yes, we do. We typically utilize the 
information that they provide regarding weather systems 
approaching the fire. We depend on the National Weather Service 
to let us know when, say, for instance, any thunderstorms, 
any--that might be in the area are collapsing or building that 
would impact our fire operations. So there's a--there's two 
differences. One's the initial attack efforts that we have. 
Those--typically, we use National Weather Service products and 
information either prior to or immediately during a wildfire. 
As we transition into extended attack where a fire lasts for 
several days to several weeks, then we become more dependent on 
some of the day-to-day, hour-by-hour products that they can 
provide us on an incident to be able to--not only our strategic 
operations, but our tactical operations. And those are critical 
for firefighter and public safety.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Issa [presiding]. The gentlelady yields back.
    We now go to the gentlelady and acting Ranking Member from 
Oregon.
    Ms. Salinas. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to thank 
Chair Lucas and Ranking Member Lofgren for holding this hearing 
today, and thank you to the panelists for being here.
    You know, this is a really important hearing, especially 
for my State of Oregon. Wildfire risk is a key concern of many 
of my constituents in the 6th District, and I remember the 
fires of 2020, the Labor Day wildfires. I remember having my go 
bag, learning very quickly--and I don't live in the WUI. I was 
in the Portland suburbs, and we all had our go bags, and we 
were ready to go, but we weren't sure where because that's how 
bad this was impacting the entire State. You know, it was one 
of the most destructive on record, resulted in at least 11 
deaths, over a million acres burned, and the destruction of 
thousands of homes. And of course, the Western United States 
has always had wildfire season, but climate change-induced 
weather impacts like droughts, heat domes are intensifying 
them. And fires--and the so-called season is expanding. I--you 
know, I looked yesterday, and I think we had 22 wildfires 
burning in the State of Oregon right now, burning thousands of 
acres. I don't know what it is today.
    So before I dive into the questions, I'd also note--and I 
think a few of my colleagues have also touched on this--that, 
you know, wildfires don't just impact the areas where they're 
burning, right? We see the effects of--Canada's wildfire smoke 
travels far and wide and can endanger cardiovascular systems of 
people who are vulnerable. So my first question is--so, 
essentially, this is not just a Western States issue, as we've 
all heard today.
    My first question is for Dr. Tohidi. In your testimony, you 
outline the importance of fire physics for developing accurate 
wildfire models. Can you expand on your work integrating fire 
physics into models and identify where scientists' 
understanding of the subject might be lacking?
    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you. Yes, specifically, my work relates 
to the phenomenon called firebrand showers. We have been 
studying their generation, their transport, and now spot 
ignition, and trying to implement them in our operational 
models. Improving this process and represent--a physics-based 
representation of this process in our operational models really 
help us to understand the contribution of this phenomenon in 
the actual rate of spread. You know, fire, usually as being 
perceived by public, is like a ball of flame that goes through 
the combustibles. But these particles that land ahead of that 
wall or that fire front can play an important role in the 
dispersion or the propagation of the fire in the community. So 
we have been trying to improve that part and at least provide a 
physical representation in our models.
    Specifically, the areas of improvements, as I mentioned, we 
can--if we can improve the quality, resolution, and frequency 
of the data layers for these models, that can really help to 
see better forecasts in the short term. And in the long term, 
we need to really invest on better observations at flame scale 
using multispectral sensors, remote-sensing satellites to 
really observe the fire behavior at that scale. And the 
knowledge that we get from those observations and as well as 
the experimental campaign can be incorporated into the future 
or the next generation of fire models that we have.
    Ms. Salinas. Thank you. That's really helpful.
    Mr. Goeller, as you know, responding to wildfires is a 
complex undertaking. And I think you've touched on this a bit. 
Personnel and equipment must be moved rapidly to fires to bring 
them under control. Can you talk through the considerations 
that you must make when responding to fire detection?
    Mr. Goeller. Some of the issues that we face responding to 
when a fire is detected, in particular, if we are transporting 
equipment across State lines, we do need some help in regards 
to being able to rapidly move in particular State and Federal 
equipment across State lines without having to go through the 
onerous process of receiving permits to be able to do that. And 
that does limit us on response, especially in those 
interagency, interstate deployments. The fire detection part of 
it for initial attack, to have that advanced knowledge of where 
the worst and the most probable occurrence of fires will happen 
is critical for us to pre-position equipment and resources, 
aircraft, equipment, personnel to make those aggressive and 
rapid initial attacks, keep the fire small to prevent those 
large-scale incidents from occurring.
    Ms. Salinas. Thank you. And thank you all so much. I yield 
back.
    Mr. Issa. The gentlelady yields back.
    We now go to the gentleman from New York.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I thank Chair Lucas and 
Ranking Member Lofgren and our witnesses for being here today.
    As I know my colleagues have highlighted this morning, 
wildfires and wildfire smoke impact communities and economies 
in every corner of the Nation. And they will only worsen, 
putting our communities at more danger if we do not address the 
threat of a climate change--of climate change with the urgency 
required.
    Earlier this summer, the communities that I represent in 
New York's capital region experienced some of the worst air 
quality days in history due to smoke from the ongoing Canadian 
wildfires. And make no mistake, this was not a one-time event. 
My district is fortunate to have state-of-the-art weather 
research at the University at Albany, which houses the New York 
State Mesonet. It's a program that has a network of 126 
observing stations across the State and 17 Doppler LIDAR (light 
detection and ranging) sites that are critical for monitoring 
air quality and smoke. Last year, the university released a 
study using Mesonet data from 2021 and 2022, noting the ways 
that wildfire smoke from the Western United States is already 
impacting air quality across our Nation, reaching as far as the 
East Coast.
    So, Mr. Goeller, how can Mesonet data be used to track and 
respond to wildfires and wildfire smoke?
    Mr. Goeller. Well, for--to use the Mesonet data, especially 
as we--if--you know, looking at initial attack, for example, 
initial attack wildfires, using the Mesonet data would allow us 
to prioritize which fires might be addressed first. As we see 
where they occur and looking at the data that is generated 
through a Mesonet, it shows us what the weather system is doing 
at a particular time, where the most impactful temperature, 
winds, and humidity and--are occurring, and that would allow us 
to do some prioritization of resources and where they would 
most be efficient and utilizing in that.
    For tracking smoke, I'm not sure if the Mesonet does that 
or not. I think that we would have to use some other modeling 
and other systems--National Weather Service would be key in 
that--to address where the smoke is located, what the movements 
are. You know, we do have a number of airsheds across the 
United States, Oklahoma, seven, and I can't address how many 
other--what other States have, but we do know through our air 
quality organizations where this--where the smoke will be 
moving and then what we would need to do in advance of that to 
warn the public and make the most appropriate--or take the most 
appropriate actions prior to that impacting the areas.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you. And are there any challenges or 
limitations to using Mesonet data for these purposes? And how 
might a Mesonet program be strengthened and better prepared to 
address those challenges?
    Mr. Goeller. I think having more sites would be great, 
having the ability to sample other data. We do use Mesonet not 
only for the--just the basic fire data, but we also have a 
program called OK-Fire. It's another--kind of works off the 
backbone of the Mesonet. I'm not sure if New York uses this or 
not since they do--you mentioned the Mesonet there. But OK-Fire 
also has the fuel moistures. It has some of our energy release 
component data, burning index, a number of other products that 
are critical to fire managers for not only prescribed burning, 
but also for fire response.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you. And, Mr. Goeller, can you speak more 
broadly to the role that smoke management typically plays while 
responding to a wildfire or carrying out a prescribed burn? How 
can we optimize these processes to mitigate harmful smoke in 
communities nearby and farther away?
    Mr. Goeller. I'll just specifically address the prescribed 
burning aspect of that, wildfire smoke being--it's an unplanned 
ignition, and we do have those issues as far as addressing 
that. That becomes a little more complicated because it's 
something that we are responding to and not being proactive 
for. And so using the Mesonet products and planning for 
prescribed burning, we can utilize the weather data that's 
generated from the Mesonet stations and also the National 
Weather Service forecast offices to look at what the best days 
are for prescribed burning to limit smoke management impact. 
Most States do have voluntary smoke management guidelines. We 
try to live by those in order to keep those from becoming 
mandatory. And by utilizing the weather information from 
National Weather Service, NOAA, and our Mesonet stations, we 
can do that to limit those impacts.
    When we have the--we don't want to have exceedances that 
are identified by our State air quality organizations and EPA 
(Environmental Protection Agency) because once we begin to have 
those exceedances, then the likelihood of our air quality 
regulations becoming mandatory become more real. So we want to 
do everything we can on prescribed burns to limit the smoke 
impacts to communities, values at risk as we do those 
activities, which, as you can imagine, it becomes more and more 
difficult as our weather systems change, as we have drier and 
drier fuels and more fuel to burn. It becomes a little more 
challenging to effectively prescribe burn and not have smoke 
management issues.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I had 
questions for Mr. Tohidi that I'll get to the Committee, 
Subcommittee. And with that, I yield back. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Mr. Issa. I thank the gentleman.
    We now go to the gentleman from Georgia, who has been 
patiently waiting.
    Mr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    This is actually a fun topic for me because my dad was a 
special investigator for the forest fires and timber thefts. 
And so I remember growing up literally watching the retardant 
drop pictures, of big buckets held up from helicopters being 
dropped on fires, and knowing the unpredictable nature of both 
the start of forest fires and how you control them with the 
crews. With all the challenges we have right now, I'm actually 
really excited about your technology. I'm really interested to 
hear how you've used something that can actually save us money, 
save us time, and more effectively fight forest fires. I mean, 
what can be bad about any of those things?
    The one concern I have is how we're managing this from a 
political aspect and making sure that we get out of your way in 
order to execute what you're going to do to help us fight 
forest fires, which is coming back to the FAA and how we're 
monitoring and how we might get in your way. What kind of 
things do we as Congress need to eliminate as--like antiquated 
rules, regulations, things that would get in the way of you 
being effective with your new technologies?
    Mr. Peverill. I think streamlining the use of advanced 
drone operations, you know, is really necessary to deploy these 
technologies. You know, they're deployed kind of in research 
bases mostly now, but widespread deployment is possible. And we 
could have one of these hives placed at every Mesonet node, for 
instance. But that's not possible under the current 
regulations. There really needs to be advancement there. The 
limitation is not really the technology at this point. It 
actually is the regulations. And so, you know, progress is 
needed there to get this technology out and benefiting the U.S. 
public.
    Mr. McCormick. As far as you know, since you'd be more 
ready on this than myself, which I'm changing here today, right 
now, as we're talking, is there any movement right now from 
Congress to make that effectively happen to get the regulation 
out of the way?
    Mr. Peverill. I think there is movement in the FAA 
reauthorization bill----
    Mr. McCormick. Perfect.
    Mr. Peverill [continuing]. To bring more parties to the 
table to help the FAA move that forward.
    Mr. McCormick. Hopefully, that'll be a great bipartisan 
effort as we move forward to do something good for the Nation. 
Thank you.
    With that, I yield.
    Mr. Issa. The gentleman yields back.
    We now go to the gentleman from Illinois.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you, Mr. Acting Chairman, and to all of 
our witnesses.
    So I just got back a couple days ago from a CODEL 
(congressional delegation) up to Alaska talking about the 
impacts of climate change up there, and, as you might imagine, 
a lot of focus on permafrost melt and what happens to methane 
releases. But we got into this really interesting conversation 
with folks from NASA and permafrost researchers who said that 
what they've found is that the--in addition to the methane 
risk, or maybe in lieu of the methane risk, they've observed 
that when you get on the regular fire cycle, so, you know, in 
the before times before the climate was so hot, the fire would 
come through, it would essentially burn up the forest later 
that had been deposited since the last fire cycle. But as the 
fires are coming more frequently and you've got fuel that's on 
the ground, you've lost some of the protections of the canopy 
to slow down the fire. They're now--you--they're now saying 
that you burn all the way down into the soils and release, you 
know, hundreds or thousands of years of soil carbon, which of 
course raises all sorts of concerns about agricultural 
solutions to ameliorate climate change.
    I've now told you everything I know about the topic. So if 
you think I sound smart, don't ask me any more follow up 
questions.
    But I guess I'd like to start with Mr. Goeller. Is that--
and I saw you nodding, but is--do I have the basic facts of 
that right and the risk? Are you familiar with that phenomenon?
    Mr. Goeller. Well, what I was nodding on is the phenomena 
that we see, you know, really anywhere in the country during 
the course of a year, and as we transition into a drought, the 
amount of fuel that will be burned during a wildfire. In some 
cases, as you mentioned, when we have adequate soil moisture 
and we have occasional rainfall, we may only burn one part of 
the fuel complex on the ground. But as we transition into 
drought, no matter where it is in the United States, we can 
burn the fuel all the way down to the soil surface, which 
releases more carbon and then also, it--more particulate matter 
into the atmosphere. And it becomes much more difficult to 
control those cases.
    Mr. Casten. And just to be clear, what they were saying is 
not just out of the soil surface, but all the way down to the 
mineral layer----
    Mr. Goeller. Well----
    Mr. Casten [continuing]. And exhausting the carbon that's 
locked in the soil.
    Mr. Goeller. And that will depend on where you are in the 
United States. In Alaska, North Carolina, some of the coastal 
areas where we have--there's three different types of fires. 
There's surface fire, there's crown fire, and then there's 
ground fire. Ground fire is where it does actually burn below 
the surface of the soil, you know, burns below the soil 
surface. In those cases in Alaska and North Carolina where they 
have peat bogs and a lot of the peat and other types of organic 
material that is below the soil surface, that will burn, and 
then there goes a release. In many parts of the country, we 
don't have that. We just have the fuel laying on the surface. 
And that's what go--where basically--the fire basically stops.
    Mr. Casten. OK. Well, if--I think it sounds like I got most 
of it right, but I'll--you know, correct me if I'm wrong. But I 
guess what I'm wondering is if we want to make sure that the--
that we keep as much of that carbon that's locked up in the 
soil consistently locked up, then do we have--and maybe this is 
a question for Dr. Tohidi. Do we have enough sort of geospatial 
precision in our fire maps that we can say, OK, this particular 
region is at risk of these deeper fires and we should maybe 
take more precautions in this area, anticipate something's 
coming, and sort of prioritize resources where the fires are 
going to be particularly intense and particularly--I'm not sure 
what the word is I'm looking for--likely to reverse centuries 
of carbon storage in soils?
    Dr. Tohidi. Thank you for the question. We definitely can 
improve on the resolution of these data layers. You know, 
currently, from what I'm aware of the highest resolution that 
we get from the fuel layers--and that includes Alaska, too--is 
30 meters by 30 meters. And you can imagine that there's a lot 
can--that can happen in a 30 meter by 30 meter area. So 
increasing the resolution of these data layers can improve the 
current State of the forecasts that we have.
    I'm not aware of the work that we can identify the 
peatlands that will undergo peatland fires, but that's a very 
important type of fire that we need to consider because these 
peatland fires, they burn for months and months and their 
suppression is extremely difficult, and we don't want to get 
into that situation. So preventive actions are the best.
    Mr. Casten. OK. Well, I'm out of time, but if any of the 
witnesses have specific thoughts on areas we should be 
prioritizing research funding or otherwise that might address 
that, I'd welcome them for the record.
    Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Mr. Issa. I thank the gentleman.
    And for the record, I want to thank our witnesses for their 
testimony and let you know, pursuant to Committee rules, the 
record will remain open for 10 days for additional comments, 
written questions, and of course, your various answers that you 
may want to put in further for the record.
    With that, that Committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:13 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

                                Appendix

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                   Additional Material for the Record



             Letter submitted by Representative Max Miller
             
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