The Los Alamos team will gather data from a planned prescribed burn of marshland at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge located at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center. The combined expertise between fire personnel from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Los Alamos scientists will allow us to gather data that are essential for understanding the effects of fire on an ecosystem and for assessing the performance of our Wildfire Prediction System. Scientists hope the Los Alamos Wildfire Prediction System eventually will accurately and rapidly predict the spread and behavior of wildfires. Researchers plan to have these models ready in the near future so they can be used to help fire professionals more effectively fight fires, train firefighters or plan strategies to prevent catastrophic fire conditions.
Weather conditions drive fire behavior, but fires also drive weather conditions.
Existing wildfire models do not take into account the complex interaction between a fire and local weather conditions. Consequently, current models are restricted to a limited range of scenarios. Fire behavior is driven by local weather conditions such as winds, temperature and moisture. The RAMS model, originally developed at Colorado State University, uses data from all over the country to predict weather parameters. RAMS then translates the information into smaller and smaller geographical areas.