Purdue University’s Institute for Digital Forestry is developing a variety of
remote-sensing solutions that can enhance the ability to determine the
probability and magnitude of wildfires at a given location.
Wildfires are now an inescapable part of our climate-changing reality: According to the National Interagency Fire
Center,
since January 1, 2024, 23,405 wildfires have burned 2,817,728 acres
across the United States alone; as of July 9, 69 large, active wildfires
— which have so far burned 612,376 acres — are currently being managed
nationwide.
Land managers and governments worldwide are fighting against decades-long
wildfire increases with every tool they’ve got — and technologies ranging from
drones,
satellites and artificial
intelligence to gas
sensors
are helping to improve early-detection capabilities.
Researchers at Purdue University’s Institute for Digital
Forestry are also developing a
variety of remote-sensing solutions that they say can enhance the ability to
determine the probability and magnitude of wildfires at a given location.
“With digital technology, my colleagues and I can study every tree — from root
to canopy,”
explains
Songlin Fei, institute director and
Dean’s Chair in Remote Sensing. “We conduct field mapping of wildfire risks at a
scale that provides critical and actionable information.”
Fei’s team of Institute researchers is creating “digital twins” (3D, virtual
replicas created to gather data and analytics that provide insights into the
interrelated systems that determine an item’s performance — increasingly used to
optimize everything from
buildings
to
packaging)
of an area’s forest to obtain critical insights into its ecology. These digital
twins allow detailed fire modeling and simulation, while facilitating public
outreach and education.
Fei says the team’s digital maps also augment sustainable forest management by
improving logistics that lead to better understanding of timber quality and
quantity.
Other fire-fighting innovations
Ayman Habib — the Dr.
Thomas A. Page Professor in Civil Engineering — leads a team that has
integrated medium-altitude, near-proximal and proximal sensing technologies on
crewed aircrafts, uncrewed aerial vehicles and wearable backpacks to capture RGB
and thermal imagery and LiDAR
(light detection and ranging) point clouds in
forests.
“We are also working on developing data analytic strategies for modeling the
forest floor; together with the detection of woody debris and description of the
underlying layer of young and short species of trees, shrubs and soft-stemmed
plants,” he said.
Aeronautics and astronautics professor James
Garrison
and his team recently released a satellite named SNOOPI (SigNals Of
Opportunity: P-band Investigation) from the International Space Station
for a proof-of-concept demonstration mission to see if satellite transmissions
can be reutilized for Earth remote sensing of biomass and moisture content of wooded areas.
“The amount of biomass above the surface and the water contained in vegetation
are theoretically measurable from SNOOPI’s observations,” Garrison said. “These
variables, along with the soil moisture, are critical for predicting the risk of
wildfires.”
Bedrich Benes, professor
of computer science, leads the computational vegetation
group that focuses on forest
reconstruction and building digital twins of plants at their functional level;
the group plans to use the 3D tree volumetric digital twins to replicate
large-scale forest fires.
“Forest fires are often simulated on the scale of individual trees, and that
does not capture their internal structure,” Benes asserted. “We want to bring it
to the level of individual branches and leaves.”
Michael Jenkins, professor of
forestry and natural resources, and Jinha
Jung,
associate professor of civil engineering, have an ongoing project to quantify
forest-fuel characteristics in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains National
Park.
“We’re hoping to use some of the digital forestry techniques that have been
developed, especially with LiDAR, to look at the vertical and horizontal
distribution of fuels to see how it may or may not aid the spread of fire,”
Jenkins said. “You have to look on the ground and understand what it means
ecologically. We’re particularly interested in some of the evergreen shrubs that
occur in the southern Appalachians and to parse out the height, the cover
and potentially the species of those shrubs,” which Jenkins explained can serve
as “ladder fuel” that can greatly intensify surface fires.
Another Institute collaboration between Daniel
Aliaga and Aniket
Bera, both associate
professors in the Department of Computer
Science, will apply digital
technologies to urban fire analysis.
Using satellite data, Aliaga and Bera’s team recently completed a digital
inventory of trees and buildings in 330 cities with populations greater than
100,000 in all 50 states. Aliaga said questions they’re looking to address
include “What are the urban codes, the urban policies we should change or
implement to reduce likelihood of fire starting and fire transmission?”
Urban forest-fire studies could also help answer some seemingly simple questions such
as where to put fire stations and fire hydrants.
Aliaga’s team has conducted a study stemming from the 2018 Camp
Fire in
California. The researchers found that by using archived satellite data,
they can inventory every tree before and after a fire.
Urban
forest
fires are less studied than wildfires, Bera noted: “It is studied, but not to
the degree of how plumes or gases or the fire itself spreads — can we build
better predictive models in urban situations?”
The Institute for Digital Forestry’s goal is to develop digital platforms and
strategies that measure, monitor and manage urban and rural forests
to maximize social, economic and ecological benefits.
“We use the ‘measuring every tree on the planet’ slogan to inspire us, to be our
moonshot goal,” Fei said. “If you know the quality and quantity of your
resources, you can be a better manager.”
Published Jul 10, 2024 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST
Sustainable Brands Staff
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