[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE STATE OF FEDERAL WILDLAND
FIRE SCIENCE: EXAMINING OPPORTUNITIES
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH & COORDINATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 29, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-23
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
_________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
53-899 PDF WASHINGTON : 2023
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma,
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan, BILL POSEY, Florida
Vice Chair RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
MELANIE A. STANSBURY, New Mexico MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
BRAD SHERMAN, California JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
JERRY McNERNEY, California MIKE GARCIA, California
PAUL TONKO, New York STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
BILL FOSTER, Illinois YOUNG KIM, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
DON BEYER, Virginia JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois JAY OBERNOLTE, California
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina VACANCY
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin VACANCY
DAN KILDEE, Michigan
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
C O N T E N T S
June 29, 2021
Page
Hearing Charter.................................................. 2
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Zoe Lofgren, Chairwoman, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 8
Written Statement............................................ 9
Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 10
Written Statement............................................ 11
Written statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Chairwoman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 12
Witnesses:
Dr. Craig B. Clements, Professor of Meteorology and Director of
the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose
State University
Oral Statement............................................... 13
Written Statement............................................ 16
Dr. Jessica McCarty, Assistant Professor of Geography and
Director of the Geospatial Analysis Center at Miami University
Oral Statement............................................... 28
Written Statement............................................ 30
Mr. George Geissler, State Forester and Deputy for Wildland Fire
and Forest Health and Resiliency at the Washington Department
of Natural Resources
Oral Statement............................................... 34
Written Statement............................................ 36
Fire Chief Erik Litzenberg (Ret.), Chair of the Wildland Fire
Policy Committee at the International Association of Fire
Chiefs
Oral Statement............................................... 45
Written Statement............................................ 47
Discussion....................................................... 53
Appendix: Additional Material for the Record
Report submitted by Representative Bill Posey, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives
``Human Presence Diminishes the Importance of Climate in
Driving Fire Activity Across the United States,'' Alexandra
D. Syphard, et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences................................................... 88
THE STATE OF FEDERAL WILDLAND
FIRE SCIENCE: EXAMINING OPPORTUNITIES
FOR FURTHER RESEARCH & COORDINATION
----------
TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 2021
House of Representatives,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m., in
room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building and via Zoom,
Hon. Zoe Lofgren [Chairwoman of the Committee] presiding.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Lofgren. This hearing will come to order, and,
without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess
at any time. Before I deliver my opening remarks, I wanted to
note that today the Committee is meeting both in person and
virtually, and I want to announce a couple of reminders to the
Members about the conduct of this hearing. First, Members and
staff who are attending in person, and who are unvaccinated
against COVID-19, need to stay masked throughout the hearing.
Unvaccinated Members may remove their masks only during their
questioning under the five minute rule. Or, of course,
unvaccinated persons can also attend remotely. Members who are
attending virtually should keep their video feed on as long as
they are present in the hearing. Members are responsible for
their own microphones, and please also keep your microphones
muted, unless you're speaking. And, finally, if Members have
documents they wish to submit for the record, please e-mail
them to the Committee Clerk, whose e-mail address was
circulated prior to the hearing.
I want to say good morning, and thank Chairwoman Johnson
for agreeing to hold this hearing. She is in her district with
the First Lady of the United States today, and I am honored to
be able to the Chair this hearing on wildlife fire science, and
I think it's very clear that in the 2021 fire season--we've
already had that begin--it's on pace to be much worse than last
year. Already over 100,000 more acres of the American wildland
have burned than by this point in time in 2020. Firefighters in
my home State of California are currently battling at least six
large wildfires throughout the State. As a Californian, this is
cause for alarm. In 2020 alone the U.S. saw record wildfires
burn 10 million acres of land, over four million of which were
in California. In 2018 Californian fires only burned two
million acres. The warmer and drier conditions created by
climate change have increased extreme wildfire conditions, with
nine more days of higher--high fire potential added every year
since 2000.
As the risk for catastrophic wildfire grows, so should our
ability to forecast wildfires and to mitigate fire risk.
Today's hearing presents an opportunity to discuss the current
state of wildland fire research, and how we can use it to
improve our understanding of conditions in the field. We'll
also discuss gaps in the science, and identify opportunities
for further Federal investment and coordination. Federal
programs like the U.S. Drought Monitor are instrumental in
helping our wildland managers prepare for worsening fire
seasons. This is just one example of how enhanced coordination
amongst science agencies with operational managers can lead to
actionable science. With dedicated authorities and investments
in wildfire science, we can develop additional capabilities for
real time detection of fire ignition, and even deepen our
understanding of wildfire fuels.
I was proud to co-sponsor an amendment with my colleague,
Mr. Perlmutter, on wildfire resilience research funding at--in
the NSF for the Future Act. It was great--it was a great start
to what we can do to strengthen wildlife research, but we must
do more. It's not right for Congress not to act to bolster our
wildlife research, it's also dangerous. That's why I'm drafting
legislation in this Committee to improve the understanding,
prediction, and management of wildland fires through robust
research initiatives. This bill will also enhance Federal
interagency collaboration and coordination to include science
agencies in Federal wildland fire response. I hope this bill
will also lead to our Federal science agencies working closely
with fire managers to ensure that wildfire science can be
operationalized to mitigate wildfire risk.
We are fortunate to have witnesses today whose testimony
will inform this legislation. Joining us are academic
researchers who use information provided by agencies like NOAA
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and NASA
(National Aeronautics and Space Administration), and the EPA
(Environmental Protection Agency) to build out America's
wildfire research capacity, and we look forward to hearing from
them about opportunities for areas of further investment in
wildfire science. I'd also like to extend a warm welcome to Dr.
Craig Clements, who is a professor at, yes, San Jose State
University, located in my congressional district. Dr. Clements
is the Director of San Jose State University's Wildfire
Interdisciplinary Research Center, which is a leader in
wildfire research. I look forward to hearing his testimony
about the importance of supporting interdisciplinary wildfire
research.
We're also fortunate to have with us today some of the
bravest people facing the wildfire crisis, our first
responders, forest managers, and firefighters, intimately
understand which innovations best support on the ground needs.
This hearing is a critical first step in creating a truly whole
of government response to wildfire risks that connects research
to operations. We're encouraged by the administration's
emphasis on climate resilience and robust funding in the
President's budget request for our science agencies to tackle
extreme weather events. This leaves us ample room to work with
appropriators to ensure funding levels in keeping with the
magnitude of the wildfire challenges we face.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Lofgren follows:]
Good morning and thank you Chairwoman Johnson for holding
this timely hearing on wildland fire science, and for allowing
me to take the gavel.
It is clear: the 2021 fire season has already begun, and
it's on pace to be much worse than the historic season observed
across the West last year. Already, almost 200,000 more acres
of American wildland have burned than by this point in time in
2020--a 10-year high. Firefighters in my home state of
California are currently battling at least six large wildfires
throughout the state. As a Californian, this is cause for
alarm. In 2020 alone, the U.S. saw record wildfires burn 10
million acres of land--over four million of which were in
California. In 2018, Californian fires only burned two million
acres. The cycle of extreme heat and drought in the West have
increased extreme wildfire conditions, adding nine more days of
high fire potential every year since 2000.
As the risk for catastrophic wildfire grows, so should our
ability to forecast wildfires and mitigate fire risk. Today's
hearing presents an opportunity to discuss the current state of
wildland fire research and how we use it to improve our
understanding of conditions in the field. We will also discuss
gaps in the science and identify opportunities for further
federal investment and coordination. Federal programs like the
U.S. Drought Monitor are instrumental in helping our wildland
managers prepare for worsening fire seasons. This is just one
example of how enhanced coordination among science agencies,
and with operational managers, can lead to actionable science.
With dedicated authorities and investments in wildfire science,
we can develop additional capability for real-time detection of
fire ignition, and even deepen our understanding of wildfire
fuels. I was proud to cosponsor an amendment, with my colleague
Mr. Perlmutter, on wildfire resilience research funding in the
NSF for the Future Act. It was a great start to what we can do
to strengthen wildfire research, but we must do more.
It is not just unwise for Congress not to act to bolster
our wildfire research, it is dangerous. Throwing ourselves at
each megafire is neither a near-term nor long-term solution.
That is why I am drafting legislation in this Committee to
improve the understanding, prediction, and management of
wildland fires through robust research initiatives. This bill
will also enhance federal interagency collaboration and
coordination to include science agencies in federal wildland
fire response. I hope this bill will also lead to our federal
science agencies working closely with fire managers to ensure
that wildfire science can be operationalized to mitigate
wildfire risk.
We are fortunate to have witnesses today whose testimony
will inform this legislation. Joining us are academic
researchers who use information provided by agencies like NOAA,
NASA, and the EPA to build out America's wildfire research
capacity. We look forward to hearing from them about
opportunities for areas of further investment in wildfire
science. I would also like to extend a warm welcome to Dr.
Craig Clements who is a professor at San Jose State University
located in my district. Dr. Clements is the Director of SJSU's
Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center, which is a leader
in wildfire research. I look forward to hearing his testimony
about the importance of supporting interdisciplinary wildfire
research. We are also fortunate to have with us today some of
the bravest people facing the wildfire crisis: our first
responders. Forest managers and firefighters intimately
understand which innovations best support on-the-ground needs.
This hearing is a critical first step in creating a truly
whole-of-government response to wildfire risk that connects
research to operations. We are encouraged by the Biden
Administration's emphasis on climate resilience and robust
funding in the President's Budget Request for our science
agencies to tackle extreme weather events. This leaves us ample
room to work with appropriators to ensure funding levels in
keeping with the magnitude of the wildfire challenge we face.
With that, I want to thank our witnesses for their time this
morning. At this point, I would like to yield to the Ranking
Member for any comments he may wish to make.
Chairwoman Lofgren. With that, I want to thank our
witnesses for their time this morning, and at this point I
would like to yield to the Ranking Member for any comments he
may wish to make.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, and I'd like to thank Chairwoman
Johnson for holding this hearing, and Chairwoman Lofgren for
presiding today. Today's hearing is timely as we enter the
summer months, which have traditionally marked the beginning of
wildfire season. However, I am sure many of my Western
colleagues would agree that there is really not much of a true
wildfire season anymore, with fires occurring year-round. Last
year brought haunting images of devastating wildfires across
the West. This year, unfortunately, could be even worse. The
National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) reports that the number
of fires and acres burned to date are ahead of last year's
figures. Given the ongoing drought covering much of the West,
it's reasonable to conclude this year's wildfire statistics
could be historic.
Wildfire is an important part of the ecosystem, and often
occurs naturally. Many plant species rely on wildfire for their
growth and regeneration processes, and many animal species look
to recently burned lands for their habitat. However, lengthier
drought, 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, which is
problematic. Additionally, the increased number of people who
live in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), the area where
residential neighborhoods meet wooded areas, has created the
need for a different allocation of resources. While wildfires
represent a threat to life and property, they also have
devastating environmental impacts, ranging from polluted
watersheds to increased carbon dioxide released into the
atmosphere.
We tend to think of the West as being the most vulnerable
to wildfire, but this is an issue for all of us. Resources
spent combatting wildfire by our Federal land management
agencies are resources that could be spent on revenue-
generating recreational activities, and are a diversion of
attention away from other local emergency response needs.
Several agencies within our Committee's jurisdiction have a
role in combatting wildfire, whether it's NASA providing Earth
imaging data or NOAA's incident meteorologists helping
firefighters plot the best path to fight an ongoing fire. Other
agencies, such as NSF (National Science Foundation) and NIST
(National Institute of Standards and Technology), engage in
research on different aspects of wildlife behavior, and how we
can better fireproof structures. But we must be certain that
all the work of these agencies is carried out in a coordinated
manner, and is being effectively put into operations by
agencies such as the Forestry Service and the Department of
Interior (DOI).
I want to thank our witnesses for appearing before us
today. I'm especially pleased to welcome George Geissler, who's
currently the Washington State Forester. He previously was the
State Forester of Oklahoma, and can speak to the impacts of
wildfire in different parts of the country. I look forward to
hearing his thoughts on where there are gaps in Federal
research, how we can improve coordination among Federal
agencies, and what actions we can take which would be the most
beneficial to him, and all the on-ground wildfire responders. I
know this is a busy period for him, especially given the
record-breaking temperatures most of the West faced this past
week, and I thank him for taking time to share his extensive
experience with the Committee. With that, Madam Chair, I want
to thank you, and I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]
Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, for holding this hearing.
Today's hearing is timely as we enter the summer months which
have traditionally marked the beginning of wildfire season.
However, I am sure many of my western colleagues would agree
that there is really not much of a true wildfire season
anymore, with fires occurring year-round.
Last year brought haunting images of devastating wildfires
across the West. This year unfortunately could be even worse.
The National Interagency Fire Center reports that the number of
fires and acres burned to date are ahead of last year's
figures. Given the ongoing drought covering much of the west,
it is reasonable to conclude that this year's wildfire
statistics could be historic.
Wildfire is an important part of the ecosystem and often
occurs naturally. Many plant species rely on wildfire for their
growth and regeneration processes and many animal species look
to recently burned lands for their habitat. However, 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, which is
problematic. Additionally, the increased number of people who
live in the wildland-urban interface--the area where
residential neighborhoods meet wooded areas--has created the
need for a different allocation of resources.
While wildfires represent a threat to life and property,
they also have devastating environmental impacts, ranging from
polluted watersheds to increased carbon dioxide released into
the atmosphere.
We tend to think of the West as being the most vulnerable
to wildfire, but this is an issue for us all. Resources spent
combatting wildfire by our federal land management agencies are
resources which could be spent on revenue generating
recreational activities and are a diversion of attention away
from other local emergency response needs.
Several agencies within our committee's jurisdiction have a
role in combatting wildfire, whether it is NASA providing earth
imaging data or NOAA incident meteorologists helping
firefighters plot the best path to fight an ongoing fire. Other
agencies such as NSF and NIST engage in research on different
aspects of wildfire behavior and how we can better fireproof
structures. But we must be certain that all the work of these
agencies is carried out in a coordinated manner and is being
effectively put into operation by agencies such as the Forest
Service and the Department of the Interior.
I want to thank our witnesses for appearing before us
today. I'm especially pleased to welcome George Geissler, who
is currently the Washington state forester. He was previously
state forester of Oklahoma and can speak to the impacts of
wildfire in different parts of our country. I look forward to
hearing his thoughts on where there are gaps in federal
research, how we can improve coordination among federal
agencies, and what actions we can take which would be most
beneficial to him and all on-the-ground wildfire responders. I
know this is a busy period for him, especially given the
record-breaking temperatures most of the West faced this past
weekend, and I thank him for taking the time to share his
extensive experience with the committee.
Thank you and I yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. The gentleman yields back, and,
without objection, other Members who wish may submit opening
statements to the record.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]
In districts across the country, especially in the West, we
are seeing more frequent and catastrophic wildfires destroying
lives and property. These tragedies are only getting worse.
Last year, over 10 million acres burned in this country at a
cost of over $16 billion. This year, wildfire season has
already begun. With record temperatures and drought across much
of the country, I fear how the season will progress.
We know that climate change is contributing to this growing
threat. We also know that poor land management practices over
the past several decades have allowed vegetation to
accumulate--ripe for enormous infernos. Furthermore, as
development creeps more into natural wildlands, more homes and
businesses are put at increased risk.
Our federal science agencies provide critical support to
fire managers. This includes the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the National Science
Foundation, and others. These agencies advise fire managers on
fire weather conditions, monitor fire behavior and smoke
plumes, and perform related fire research and monitoring. But
there is need for further investment and coordination of these
research efforts.
Congress must ensure that communities and firefighters have
as many tools as possible to address this growing threat. This
Committee is focused on moving critical science forward in a
collaborative way. This is critical for us to be prepared to
manage wildfires in the safest and most effective ways
possible. This is top of mind for many of the Members of this
Committee.
In particular, my colleague from California, Ms. Lofgren,
has devoted much of her time and attention to this matter. I am
glad that Representative Lofgren is working to address the gaps
in wildfire science through legislation. It is vital that the
best available science is used to inform operational decisions
on the frontlines of wildfires. It is also crucial that robust
mechanisms for collaboration and coordination are put in place.
This will ensure a unified approach to wildfire management
across the federal government and with non-federal
stakeholders.
Our expert witness panel includes those on the ground and
those doing the critical research on wildfires. They will
discuss the current state of wildfire science, but also what
they need to do their work more effectively. I look forward to
hearing their recommendations on how this Committee can help
our country better respond to our growing wildfire risk.
Thank you.
Chairwoman Lofgren. I'd now like to introduce our
witnesses, all of whom are participating remotely. Our first
witness today is Dr. Craig Clements. Dr. Clements is a
Professor of Meteorology at San Jose State University, and the
Director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center. He
leads research on fire weather, extreme fire behavior, fire/
atmosphere interactions, and conducting wildland fire field
experiments. Dr. Clements has over 20 years of experience in
the meteorological field observations, and teaches courses in
fire weather, wildfire science, mountain meteorology, climate
change, and meteorological instrumentation.
Our next witness is Dr. Jessica McCarty. Dr. McCarty is
the Director of the Geospatial Analysis Center, and as of July
1 of this year, an Associate Professor of Geography at Miami
University of Ohio. Dr. McCarty has more than 15 years'
experience in applications of geospatial and data science to
accurately quantify wildland and human-caused fire emissions,
agriculture and food security, and land cover/land use change.
She is the co-author--author of more than 30 peer reviewed
journal articles, 12 peer reviewed conference proceedings,
three book chapters, four technical reports, four data
citations, and one NASA technology transfer.
Our third witness, as has been mentioned by the Ranking
Member, is Mr. George Geissler, who is Washington State
Forester, and he's the Deputy Supervisor for Wildfire and
Foreign--Forest Health, having previously served in Oklahoma.
He has almost 30 years of experience in natural resource and
wildland fires, fire management, and 6 years of experience in
structural firefighting as a volunteer in Idaho and New Mexico.
He's a member of the Society of American Foresters since 1987,
and a certified forester. He joined the Oklahoma Forestry
Services in 2006. Before being named as State Forester, he
served in a staff function to coordinate all forest management
activities provided by the agency.
And our fourth and final witness today is Chief Erik
Litzenberg, recently retired from his position as Fire Chief
for Santa Fe County, New Mexico. Chief Litzenberg served the
majority of his career in the city of Santa Fe Fire Department,
completing his time in the city as Fire Chief and City Manager
before returning to the county where his career began. Through
25 years of service he has also worked for New Mexico State
Forestry, and is part of multiple incident management teams,
and for many years owned Santa Fe Wildfire, which provided
resources for large scale incident management and response.
As our witnesses should know, you will each have five
minutes for your spoken testimony. Your entire written
testimony will be included in the record of this hearing. When
you have completed your spoken testimony, we will begin with
questions. There will be, I believe, a little clock on your
virtual screen that will count down your five minutes, and when
your five minutes are up, we do ask that you sum up so that we
can hear all the witnesses before votes are called. So first we
will start with you, Dr. Clements.
TESTIMONY OF DR. CRAIG B. CLEMENTS,
PROFESSOR OF METEOROLOGY
AND DIRECTOR OF THE WILDFIRE
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH CENTER
AT SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Clements. Good morning, Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking
Member Lucas, and Members of the Committee, including San Jose
State's representative, Congresswoman Lofgren, who is chairing
this hearing today. Thank you for inviting me to provide
testimony on this very important issue. My name is Craig
Clements, and I serve as Director of the Wildfire
Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University.
I am honored to appear before the House Science, Space, and
Technology Committee for this hearing on ``The State of Federal
Wildland Fire Science: Examining Opportunities for Further
Research Coordination''. My testimony will focus on fire
weather and fire behavior research, and the need for additional
Federal investment in wildland fire science. At the outset I'd
like to thank Congresswoman Lofgren for advocating for
increased wildfire investments across the Federal Government in
her letter to the Biden Administration.
There is no doubt that wildfires are becoming larger and
more severe in Western U.S. This is--this trend is projected to
continue due to a number of factors, including 100 years of
fire exclusion that resulted in increased tree density and dead
fuel accumulation, and longer fire seasons, and changes in fire
weather conditions caused by climate change. Now more than ever
our Nation needs to increase investment in fire science to
empower decisionmakers in addressing the complex challenges we
face. While I won't address all research gaps in wildland fire
science today, I will focus on a few key aspects that I believe
are important.
Fundamental mechanisms of wildfire spread are still poorly
understood, especially in the context of extreme events.
Additionally, we don't have a good understanding what role fire
atmosphere interactions play on fire spread, nor do we have the
appropriate observations to tackle these questions. There is a
wide gap between the need for high resolution data to
understand fire behavior and the current capabilities of fire
observation systems. In terms of observational needs, we need
to start treating fire weather the same as we do other severe
weather phenomena. We don't have the same levels of funding or
dedicated resources for fire weather as we do for severe storms
or hurricane research. We need the equivalent of hurricane
hunters for wildfire so that we can better see and sample the
fire.
Additionally, we are missing the appropriate centers for
critical observations. Specifically, we need publicly
available, high spatial, and temporal resolution observations
from both space and aircraft. These observations can't just be
a snapshot once or twice a day. They need to be continuous over
the entire event. Comprehensive observational data sets that
include fire weather, plume dynamic, smoke and fire behavior,
are rare. The Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment,
called FASMEE, which is a multi-agency program. Addresses these
data gaps by capitalizing on high intensity prescribed fires,
and this should be a national priority.
In terms of the prediction of fire behavior, investment is
needed in operational, community-based, coupled fire atmosphere
models, which are models that link the fire spread with the
weather prediction forecast. These are the only models that can
best predict how a fire can create its own weather. A
community-based model is even more important because it allows
researchers from any institution to not only use the model, but
to also improve the model, and share it with other users. This
is in contrast to models that are kept in-house and within one
agency, institution, or National Lab that are not available for
other agencies or institutions to use or contribute to. For
example, the Open Wildfire Modeling Group facilitated
development of the first community fire atmosphere model called
WRF-SFIRE (Weather Research and Forecasting Model-Spread Fire
Model). This model has become a core forecasting system used by
many institutions and agencies around the world. Further
investment in this framework will improve our ability to better
predict extreme future fire.
In terms of driving the science forward and promoting
innovation, directed funding to agencies that support research
and development in wildfire science needs to be a priority. A
few Federal agencies are already leading wildfire research
efforts, but these are not well coordinated. One exception is
the Joint Fire Sciences Program (JFSP), that's had its budget
reduced in half. Restoring its budget, and even increasing it,
will benefit wildland fire science. Federal investment should
also target competitive grant programs where--that academic
institutions can apply for. For example, that National Science
Foundation could develop specific wildfire funding programs
across its directorates that would fund not only basic
research, but also provide more mechanism for research within
the social sciences. And finally, and most importantly, in my
opinion, is the need to establish a national and sustainable
fire weather research program. To date there's never been a
dedicated program that funds both basic and applied research in
fire weather, and this is critically needed. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Clements follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you very much, Dr. Clements. We
will now turn to our next witness, Dr. McCarty. We're pleased
to hear from you.
TESTIMONY OF DR. JESSICA McCARTY,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY
AND DIRECTOR OF THE GEOSPATIAL ANALYSIS
CENTER AT MIAMI UNIVERSITY
Dr. McCarty. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, Chairwoman
Lofgren, and Ranking Member Lucas, and distinguished Members of
the Committee. I appreciate this opportunity to appear today to
discuss research and coordination for Federal wildfire science.
I am Dr. Jessica McCarty, and as of July 1 I am an Associate
Professor of Geography at Miami University of Ohio. I have more
than 15 years' experience in applications of satellites to
quantify wildland and human-caused fires, and related
emissions, including as a member of the 2019 NOAA/NASA FIREX-AQ
(Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments Experiment--
Air Quality) Field Campaign. During my testimony, I will
highlight the relationship between climate change and
wildfires, options to reduce fire risk, solutions for
satellite-based detection and monitoring, as well as Federal
wildfire science collaboration. The opinions expressed in my
testimony are my own, and do not represent views of Miami
University.
As Dr. Clements has pointed out previously, climate change
means warmer temperatures for the entire U.S., witnessed in the
increased fire intensity and drier field conditions of the
Western States. Climate change increases drought, leading to
large stands of dry, and sometimes dead, trees. This
accelerates the likelihood of extreme fires, even in our
Eastern forests, like the 2016 Great Smoky Mountains Fire near
Gatlinburg, Tennessee that burned over 17,000 acres and killed
14 people during an exceptional drought. Within the boreal and
Arctic regions of Alaska, climate change will increase
lightning activity, will trigger a transition from boreal
forests to more fire-prone grasslands, and will dry out
peatlands, causing long lasting underground fires that will
span multiple fire seasons.
Wildfires contribute to climate change by being a source
of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. More frequent and
intense wildfires now, and in the future, can potentially lower
our forests' ability to capture carbon by reducing forest
density and tree size. Research into mitigating future wildfire
risks should note that mitigating any wildfire risk means
reducing carbon emissions and preventing further warming. Since
we cannot prevent lightning strikes, and as we work to limit
warming, our remaining options are to reduce human-caused
ignitions and to modify fuels.
Human-caused ignitions in the Western U.S. account for 84
percent of all wildfires. In a warmer and more flammable
future, we must act to reduce arson, accidental fires, and the
spread of open burning from agricultural fields to wildlands,
and research in those areas will assist in those actions.
Wildfire risks can be lowered through fuels reduction. This is
most effectively done via prescribed burning, as well as
working with indigenous fire practitioners to return cultural
burning to the land. A community's tolerance for smoke will
often dictate when or if a prescribed fire occurs, and social
science research into those community reactions is needed. The
choice is ours, do we tolerate a few hours of smoke, or do we
wait until we are forced to evacuate?
Space-borne fire detections often rely on 375 meter to one
kilometer resolution polar orbiting satellites, which are
overhead two to four times per day, as Dr. Clements mentioned.
A higher resolution sensor, like the 30 meter Landsat, is only
overhead every 16 days, but the pixel sizes are about the size
of a baseball diamond. Geostationary systems, like NOAA's GOES-
R series, have 0.5 to two kilometer pixels, so think three by
three city blocks to 11 by 11 city blocks, but they capture
images every five to 15 minutes. Improved wildland fire
detection, monitoring, and research needs combined higher
spatial and temporal resolution sensors. NOAA'S GeoXO gets us
closer to such a system, but the first launch is currently
planned for the early 2030's. We need this now. Being able to
see new fire ignitions and fire spread every 15 minutes within
baseball-sized--baseball diamond-sized grids would be a game
changer for science, for fire management and incident command,
and for public education and engagement, including improved
warning systems.
Finally, I would be remiss not to mention as well the
Joint Fire Science Program. The JFSP is a solutions-oriented
Federal research collaboration that provides scientific funding
for practical results. But the JFSP also funds and manages the
Fire Science Exchange Networks. These 15 regional fire science
exchanges provide the most relevant and current wildland fire
science to Federal, tribal, State, local, and private
stakeholders across all 50 States. Currently the funding for,
and future of, the JFSP and the regional exchanges is in
question. We should not reinvent the wheel when a functioning
and successful Federal mechanism that collaborates with non-
Federal partners at all levels already exists.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify before
you today, and I look forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. McCarty follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you very much. We'll turn to our
next witness, Mr. Geissler. We're looking forward to hearing
from you.
TESTIMONY OF MR. GEORGE GEISSLER,
STATE FORESTER AND DEPUTY FOR WILDLAND FIRE
AND FOREST HEALTH AND RESILIENCY
AT THE WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT
OF NATURAL RESOURCES
Mr. Geissler. Good morning, Chairwoman Lofgren, and
Ranking Member Lucas, and distinguished Members of the
Committee. My name is George Geissler, State Forester and
Deputy Wildland Fire and Forest Health for the Washington
Department of Natural Resources (DNR). I am past president of
the National Association of State Foresters (NASF), Chair of
the NASF's Wildland Fire Committee, and a member of the
Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC). I appreciate the
opportunity to speak with you today as the Committee examines
opportunities for further research and coordination related to
wildland fire science.
State forestry agencies, such as DNR (Department of
Natural Resources), contribute a significant portion of the
overall wildland fire suppression effort nationally in terms of
resources, personnel, capacity, and funds. Each year State and
local agencies respond to the majority, roughly 80 percent, of
all wildfires across all jurisdictions, and State Foresters
work closely with conservation districts, mayors, local and
county governments, tribal and Federal partners across the U.S.
to deliver forestry programs and wildfire protection on a
national scale. We appreciate the work of this Committee to
address this important issue, and in the interest of time, I
will highlight the following recommendations for improving
research and development efforts focused on supporting wildland
fire management.
First, please support research and development on wildland
fire behavior [inaudible] would benefit wildland fire response
efforts that would be made accessible to the general public. We
have [inaudible] services now, but there is a clear need for
real time wildfire monitoring at the operational level to
inform response. As an example, the National Hurricane Center
uses many models as guidance in the preparation of official
tracking intensity forecasts for hurricanes. Forecast models
vary tremendously in structure and complexity. Similar tools
would combine a collection or ensemble of wildfire models in
real time to provide an advantage for wildland fire operations
and better inform the public.
Second, please support the development of fire simulation
models that incorporate the built environment as a fuel.
Currently wildfire models encompass the wildlands and stop at
the built environment to better determine future threats to
communities in the WUI. Trees and grasses burn very differently
from homes and our businesses. Please support research and
development that enables remote tracking of all active wildfire
suppression resources in real time. Wildfire management and
suppression operations utilize a patchwork of communication
networks to track resources. We need to develop a standardized
system for accountability and tracking of resources, and
develop an implementation schedule for integration of the
system into the interagency environment.
We need to improve the capacity for early detection and
assessment of wildfires, particularly in rural areas.
Oftentimes in many areas, including my own State of Washington,
wildfires can go undetected for days, and we now rely more and
more on citizens to report wildfires through typical 911 calls.
More access to satellite technology and high performance
infrared cameras would greatly improve early detection and
assessment, and attacking wildfires early and when they're
small is the key to reducing fatalities, injuries, loss of
natural resource, property damage, and lowering our
firefighting costs.
Also, we ask you prioritize the development of real time
smoke modeling and decision support tools for wildland fire
managers and local and regional public health officials. There
are opportunities to leverage the resources of the EPA and
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to better understand the
public health impacts of smoke on people, including our
wildland firefighters. With many wildfires occurring in the
WUI, there are more materials and chemicals in homes and in
streets that burn and produce a very toxic environment.
We ask you provide research opportunities that will help
inform the development and implementation of the next
generation of national, State, and local codes and standards
for addressing WUI issues and catastrophic wildfire risk. This
research should utilize the best available science, and include
the review of past wildfire losses. And, finally, we ask you
develop a standard warning scale for wildfires that actually
conveys the magnitude, or potential magnitude, of current,
developing, and projected wildfire events. This scale, much
like the Enhanced Fujita Scale for tornadoes, or the Richter
Scale for earthquakes, would help convey the magnitude of the
threat to the public, and could be used to improve evacuations
and emergency preparations.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the
Committee today on behalf of Washington's Department of
National Resources and the National Association of State
Foresters. Improvements in applied research and development
technologies that support wildfire management will greatly
enhance our collective ability to safety respond to wildfire,
and better protect our communities and treasured natural
resources. I look forward to answering your questions. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Geissler follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you very much. And now for our
final witness, Chief Litzenberg, we'd be pleased to hear from
you.
TESTIMONY OF FIRE CHIEF ERIK LITZENBERG (RET.),
CHAIR OF THE WILDLAND FIRE POLICY COMMITTEE
AT THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FIRE CHIEFS
Chief Litzenberg. Good morning, Chairwoman Johnson,
Chairwoman Lofgren, and Ranking Member Lucas, as well as
Members of the Committee. I am Erik Litzenberg, recently
retired Fire Chief from Santa Fe County Fire Department. I
currently serve as Chair of the Wildland Fire Policy Committee
of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC). I
appreciate the opportunity today to discuss the state of
Federal wildland fire science and the future. Wildland fires
are now an all year threat to every State, and, as my previous
panelists, as well as Members of the Committee, have stated,
the statistics continue to rise. This year probably looks to be
the worst on record. Local fire departments are on the front
lines. We prepare our communities for fires, and are often the
first to respond. We help evacuate communities. When the fire
is over, we help communities recover, and address threats that
often follow, such as flooding, debris flows, and landslides.
While Federal agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and
FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) play the most
visible role in responding to wildland fires, Federal research
agencies, like NASA, NOAA, NIST, and NSF provide tools to help
prevent and fight future wildland fires. They currently provide
research and tools such as fire weather prediction, satellite
imagery, predictive fire analysis, research on building codes,
community fire prevention, post-fire analysis, and studies of
major catastrophic fires--greater Federal research into
satellites, climate, and technology can revolutionize
preparedness and response. As we adapt to new technology, like
unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), we can provide the incident
commanders on scene with a host of new tools. Most importantly,
we can develop an integrated picture. This will allow us to
effectively save lives and property in the face of a growing
wildland fire problem.
As Federal researchers focus on the national wildland fire
problem, I'd like to highlight some emerging fields of research
and technology for them to consider. Ground-based airborne and
satellite remote sensing systems can provide an integrated
early warning system and better picture of the incident.
Satellites can identify fires in low density areas and near
critical infrastructure. Also, remote sensing can be used to
provide information about fuels and droughts. Fire mapping can
be used to prevent and mitigate wildland fires. These maps can
guide hazardous fuels and other mitigation projects. They also
can provide real time and interactive maps to assist incident
commanders during a fire. Remote sensing data and risk maps can
be used to provide predictive analytics. This information can
be used to identify at-risk areas and focus community
preparedness and mitigation efforts. The UAS provides several
capabilities. They can hover over a fire to track its progress,
infrared cameras can be used to identify hot spots, and they
can provide a wealth of real time data to the firefighters in
the field.
The development of a firefighter location tracking system
would be a game changer. The creation of a practical
firefighter tracking tool could improve firefighter safety and
reduce the number of deaths and injuries that occur each year.
The IAFC recommends that the U.S. Forest Service, FEMA, NOAA,
and NIST work with the Wildland Fire Leadership Council to
develop a standard warning system for wildland fires. Much like
the Richter Scale for earthquakes, a standardized warning
system would help emergency managers and the public act as a
fire develops. Federal agencies should develop a standardized
data collection system. This includes uniform formatting and
methodology to capture and report wildland fire data, including
information about mitigation, prevention, and post-recovery
efforts.
Effective communication systems are the glue that link all
of these opportunities together. Unfortunately, we're still
facing problems with coverage and interoperability. It will be
crucial to address this problem to take advantage of the new
tools under development. I would like to highlight FirstNet's
role in focusing on building out a nationwide public safety
broadband network. These capabilities offer potential, but they
must be integrated effectively before incidents occur and on
scenes, so the Federal agencies should work with the Forest
Service and Department of Interior, but they should also work
with State, tribal, territorial, and local partners. There are
opportunities like WFLC and NIFC (National Interagency Fire
Center) to have these discussion. In addition, they should work
with non-governmental organizations, such as the IAFC.
Prioritization of at-risk communities can guide community
preparedness like the IAFC's Ready, Set, Go Program. In
addition, the National Fire Academy, IAFC, and other
educational and media organizations can partner with Federal
researchers to get information and technology to the
practitioners.
The wildland fire problem is a national challenge. The
IAFC looks forward to working with the Committee to mobilize
our resources for this fight. Thank you for the opportunity to
testify today.
[The prepared statement of Chief Litzenberg follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you very much for your
testimony, and to all the witnesses for your testimony. At this
point we will give Members of the Committee an opportunity to
ask questions of our witnesses for about five minutes, and I
will begin with myself.
You know, my constituents, and the constituents of many of
us on this Committee, have been dealing with severe wildland or
mega fires in recent years. In fact, the wildland fires has
grown from a season to really all year round. We had fires in
California in the winter. And, you know, in a way I think
about--yes, they're wildland fires, but they also impact urban
areas. I'll never forget visiting Santa Rosa in 2017, a little
town, not in the middle of a forest, and the fire came in and
destroyed 5 percent of the housing in that suburban community.
Going to a suburb and all the houses are gone, the shopping
center is burned down. Going, you know, with Representative
Thompson, who represents that area, to other areas of his
district that just was burned. And the fire in Paradise 2018.
Doug LaMalfa represents that area. The fire swept through, and
the entire time--town was also destroyed. So obviously we have
important steps to take.
I'm interested in how we can enhance collaboration and
coordination across the Federal Government, along with, you
know, the operational stakeholders on the front line. So, Dr.
Clements and Dr. McCarty, as academic researchers who rely on
Federal data and resources, where should the Federal investment
in wildfire science be most urgently directed? First you, Dr.
Clements.
Dr. Clements. All right, thank you. So I think that
funding these programs across all the agencies, particularly--
--
I think what we really need to focus on is research focus
so we can get better information, in terms of better tools. And
so having new tools will allow us to build what we need, in
terms of sensor systems, because we're lacking of sensor
systems, and also the fact that we need more platforms. Like
was stated earlier was the fact that we need better satellite
technology, so I think investment in a lot of satellite
development would be really beneficial to the entire wildfire
science community.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Dr. McCarty, do you have anything to
add on?
Dr. McCarty. I would just add that we also need to think
about, as we develop these tools, that we communicate them with
the public in an effective way, and we also integrate their
input. I think a lot of time when we think about wildfire risk,
and reducing wildfire risk, we forget that people are the main
cause of fires still, and the more that we are transparent and
open with the public the better they will understand the risk
and potentially act as good citizens to reduce that risk in the
future. And that includes social science research, public
health research, as was mentioned by some of the other
witnesses. Thank you.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Are there opportunities for Federal
investment or direction that could have positive impacts in the
short term, and how long do we think it will take for the
longer term investments to have realized impacts? Dr. McCarty,
and then Dr. Clements.
Dr. McCarty. So for satellite development, these things
take a while. NASA's decadal surveys are a decade long for a
reason. But oftentimes it's the funding and the priority that
limits the advancement of these systems and implementation. And
I agree also with Federal investment in the Wildland Fire
Leadership Council would also be needed so that it can interact
with the incident command and the commanders on the field, and
NIFC, as well as other agencies. And that's a short term, you
know, high risk, high reward investment that could be done
quickly within an offseason to see if that implements better in
the next fire season.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Dr. Clements, anything to add on that?
Dr. Clements. I think one thing that could happen quickly
is that restoring the Joint Fire Science Program budget would
allow researchers to just engage quickly, because that program
actually funds things faster than a lot of Federal agencies.
The timing between proposal submission and project start is
really quick, and so that could be one way to just jump start a
lot of research quickly.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Dr.--Mr. Geissler and Chief
Litzenberg, I don't have much time left in my five minutes, but
do you have anything to add to what's been said already?
Mr. Geissler. Thank you. There is one statement I'd like
to make, and I totally agree with the comments of my colleagues
here on the panel, and I would like to emphasize the
application of that science also. There's a lot of really good
work that's ongoing that will require just a little bit of
funding, and maybe increased collaboration between State,
local, and Federal agencies, and we could get this technology
to the ground, to the firefighters, where it's going to make a
difference. And so that interaction and collaboration I find is
just something that we should foster and support as much as
possible.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thanks.
Chief Litzenberg. And I will add that echo for all three
panelists, and I'll emphasize what George Geissler just said
about integration. There are places where this integration is
already happening effectively. And as science and data is
created, it'll be important to get this to the boots on the
ground, to the practitioners. And Wildland Fire Leadership
Council and the National Interagency Fire Center, that
integration is happening already, so small investments can be
leveraged significantly.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you very much. My time has
expired. I'd like to recognize the Ranking Member, Mr. Lucas.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Madam Chair. And, George, I think
we've worked together long enough I can call you George--you
mentioned in your testimony about, of course, listing several
areas, about how the Committee could fill gaps and address
shortfalls, and the Chairwoman very appropriately went down
that. Could you expand for a moment, thinking about from the
Committee's perspective, prioritizing those? Where
particularly, George, if you had the ability to give us
guidance, how would you prioritize one, two, three, four, if
you don't mind?
Mr. Geissler. No, I'd be glad to. Thank you,
Representative Lucas, and yes, you can call me George anytime.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you.
Mr. Geissler. The priorities--what we're looking at--and,
I mean, I am very aware of a lot of the satellite technology
and some of the early work that's been going on. In fact, in my
time with Oklahoma Forest Service we were working closely with
a severe storms lab, doing early detection and notification
modeling. And I know that while there's long term implications,
and development of the resource, currently there's a lot of
opportunity just to get that on the ground right now, working
with local agencies.
The other piece that I would really like to emphasize is
the firefighter and resource tracking. This is a safety issue,
and there are a number of different systems that are out there
right now, and to be able to monitor and track our resources in
real time, ensuring that we are putting them in the best places
possible, ensuring that we're utilizing them effectively, and
especially monitoring them to ensure that they are safe, and
that we are tracking, and know that they're all going home, I
think that that's just absolutely critical for us, and we could
make the changes that are necessary there. It's a
standardization process and an implementation process that
really needs to occur.
And the last one, though, for me, is very much a--I know
that there's a lot of work here, but it is something that I
would sink my money into if I had to, and that's the discussion
around real time smoke modeling, and continuing the decision
space around that. Smoke is probably the greatest public health
issue related to wildland fire, and knowing what that--
implications are, being able work with the public to improve
public health and firefighter health, in fact, I think is just
part of that mission. And the CDC and EPA, along with several
other regional smoke agencies, are doing some amazing work, and
to kind of foster that even further would be a tremendous asset
to us all.
Mr. Lucas. You know my district, George, literally from
the northeast corner of the State to the southwest corner, the
northwest half of Oklahoma, and weather forecasting's very
critical to my farmers, because it's decisions about when to
plant, apply fertilizer, harvest, utilize prescribed burns to
help maintain----
Mr. Geissler. Right.
Mr. Lucas [continuing]. The health of our rangelands. And
one of the ways that my neighbors and my spouse engage in
decisionmaking is using Oklahoma's Mesonet system, which
provides up to the minute weather data. How did you utilize the
Mesonet data when you were State Forester of Oklahoma? And
along with that, while you're thinking about it, do you believe
that such a system should be emulated in other States to help
benefit, prevent, and fight large scale wildfires?
Mr. Geissler. Yeah, the Mesonet system that Oklahoma has
is such a unique resource for firefighters. We can watch in
almost real time weather pattern changes, wind changes. I
remember distinctly my fire chief counting down a wind shift to
people in the field, telling them when it was going to occur,
and he hit it within minutes, because we were watching it all
with--on a screen. When I worked in other parts of the country,
especially if you go to places like here in Washington State,
we struggle because there's so many microclimates and not
enough monitors. And--but to be able to do that, to be able to
talk to folks in real time, and do the prediction that folks
that have all of that data, like the Mesonet, that--what the
Mesonet system provides was just unbelievably valuable to us in
that environment, especially an environment that, the type of
fuels Oklahoma has, it's a rapidly changing fire scenario.
They're very quick, fine fuels, and you have to know the wind
very, very effectively to do it.
In other parts of the country, when I got--get out I do
sometimes wax nostalgia about Mesonet, and having something to
that effect across the United States would be amazing. And I
think fire--any fire manager that works in Oklahoma is always
thrilled by the app that we can easily download on our phones
and do all of that. So it's an excellent tool, I agree.
Mr. Lucas. Absolutely, the ability to protect both
citizens' lives and their property. And I know there have been
many occasions, as you've kind of alluded to, when volunteer
fire lines--members had been moved in a hurry because they
couldn't survive where they were. An amazing system. With that,
I thank you, George, and I yield back, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you very much. The gentlelady
from Oregon is now recognized, Ms. Bonamici.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much, Chair Lofgren, and thank
you to Chair Johnson and Ranking Member Lucas for holding this
hearing today, but especially thank you to our witnesses for
bringing your expertise. I represent Northwest Oregon, and this
past weekend the Pacific Northwest faced a record-breaking heat
wave, with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees for multiple
days. In fact, it was 115 degrees at home yesterday. These
dangerous temperatures, combined with a thin snowpack and below
average precipitation, are really raising alarms about our
upcoming wildfire season. In fact, we have already seen a 6,200
acre fire on the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs
Reservation in Central Oregon. Fortunately it's been mostly
contained, but Oregonians have become all too familiar with
wildfires in recent years.
Over Labor Day weekend just last year rare powerful winds
and very dry conditions resulted in unprecedented wildfires
across the State. Approximately a million acres burned. Lives
were lost, homes and communities were destroyed. Hazy skies and
smoky conditions made the air quality in Portland comparable to
some of the most polluted places on the planet. Thank you, Mr.
Geissler, for highlighting the health hazards of smoke.
Now, our communities are really on the front lines of the
climate crisis, and wildfires are yet another example of the
need for comprehensive and bold climate action, so I want to
ask you, Dr. Clements, you said we need to treat wildfires like
other natural disasters and severe weather threats, and in your
testimony you noted the deficiencies in our understanding of
how wildfires create their own weather, and how fire
atmospheric interactions can affect spread. So how would
improving our understanding of fire weather help to mitigate or
respond to wildfires, and how can Congress better direct
Federal agencies to conduct this important research?
Dr. Clements. Thank you. So, yeah, the fire weather gap--
knowledge gap is really in--is a problem because we just don't
put those resources to fire weather, like I mentioned thinking
about the hurricane hunters. We don't have those resources for
fire. Now, we have suppression resources, very--you know, tons
of suppression resources. One thing we can do is we can
instrument suppression aircraft with these tools, with the
science tools. I've been advocating this in--for a while now,
and it wouldn't be that hard, because everything would be
automated, and we could actually just get all the information
in real time.
So harnessing the current platforms that are surrounding
fires is really important, and I think what we're missing is
that we can't--you know, when we go to--so, for example, my
team, we go to active wildfires in California with Doppler
radar and Doppler lidar, and we're the only team in the U.S.
that can do that. There are no observations on active
wildfires. It's not like there's storm chasers chasing fires.
We're the--this small team, and we get just a little bit of
information here and there. We need to change that concept and
make it more of a priority, where we're actually supporting the
incident meteorologists of the National Weather Service on
these big fires.
In addition, I think we could support--funding could be
directed to NOAA for this type of infrastructure to support the
incident meteorologists. You know, they're tasked with
forecasting very high resolution, using models, but they don't
have the observations on the fire, and some of these fires are
so remote that we don't have the observations. In California--
--
Ms. Bonamici [continuing]. I don't want to cut you off,
but I want to try to get in another question. Thank you so
much.
Dr. Clements. Yeah, sorry.
Ms. Bonamici. I just want to ask----
Dr. Clements. Yeah.
Ms. Bonamici. --Chief Litzenberg, last year I joined my
colleagues on the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in
releasing our bold science-based plan to reach net zero
emissions no later than mid-century, and net negative
thereafter. The plan represents the first significant
legislative proposal to address the need for climate resilience
investments, including investing in wildfire risk mapping
systems that integrate relevant data from Federal agencies,
States, and partners. So in your testimony you noted the
importance of risk mapping and real time interactive maps, so
what are the implications of the expansion of the wildland
urban interface without high resolution mapping, and how could
better maps, including parcel level data, better inform
planning and response decisions?
Chief Litzenberg. Thank you for that question,
Congresswoman. So that is the key to what we do, getting good
data, and putting it in a way that's usable not only to our
responders, but to those in the community who are working on
the team that's doing prevention, doing mitigation, trying to
make our communities safer. And as we have seen hotter, drier
conditions, the risk areas have expanded. I will say that--and
I said it in my testimony as well--one of the keys to me, and
my profession, and my representation as a responder, is that
that data becomes available as real time as possible to those
that are on the ground doing the work. So there's application
in both prevention and mitigation, and predictive analysis, and
incident command, and real time situational awareness.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. My time has expired. I
yield back. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you very much. Mr. Posey is now
recognized.
Mr. Posey. Thank you, Madam Chair. I really appreciate you
hearing all this. Mr. Geissler, the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences issued a report entitled ``Human Presence
Diminishes the Importance of Climate in Driving Fire Activity
Across the United States''. This report is significant because
it found that climate was significantly less important where
humans were more prevalent, suggesting that human influences
override, or even exceed, the effect of climate change on fire
activity. And, Madam Chair, I'd ask unanimous consent to submit
this report for the record?
Chairwoman Lofgren. Without objection.
Mr. Posey. Thank you so much. Based on your experience, to
prevent fires, should our limited resources be focused more, or
specifically on what and how, we are building in fire zones
rather than the broader topic of climate change? Mr. Geissler,
I appreciate your response.
Mr. Geissler. Thank you, Congressman, I appreciate that.
Actually, the--when we talk about fire and fire prevention, I--
one of the earlier panelists mentioned the greatest numbers of
fires are caused by humans. Whether it be a spark or a
campfire, we use the old Smokey Bear message of Only You.
Bottom line, though, is with development in wild and urban
areas, we're getting more people, and so you have more
opportunities for fires to occur. It's not that they're not
trying to prevent it, but it's just greater opportunities.
In fact, in my own State of Washington, the west side,
while it does have forests that typically have a longer
duration between fires because of the fuels types, that's where
our biggest population is, and we are seeing significant fires
there. But at the same time, if you look at our forests, and
our forest resiliency, climate has had an impact on that also.
And so, combining with the--both challenges, that why a lot of
what you see happening right now is an emphasis on working
toward healthier forests, greater resiliency in those forests,
and making them more for--fire adaptive.
So for me it's really a two prong approach. There is the
long term of we have to get our fuel situation under control,
we have to be able to keep our landscapes resilient, whether
it's a forest or a rangeland, but at the same time there's an
education process and a prevention process which we have to get
people to be aware of what they're doing, be able to prevent
those fires, and then, in our planning efforts, ask people--
move into these beautiful areas, we have to get those areas
better prepared for the interactions and the fires that will
inevitably come.
Chairwoman Lofgren. And I lost, so--I--can you hear us?
Mr. Geissler. I cannot hear you anymore. Or I cannot hear
the Congressman.
Mr. Posey. How about that? Is this better?
Mr. Geissler. That's better, sir. Thank you.
Mr. Posey. I'm asking if you'd be kind enough to explain
why we need to include our ``built communities'', those where
we have built homes, roads, businesses, and schools, in fire
simulation models?
Mr. Geissler. Easily, because, as we see the roads and the
homes being put into these areas, our models currently just
look at it as a continuous layer of fuels. Basically, we look
at it as trees and grasses. Homes and businesses, structures,
all of these things change the fire behavior, change the way
that fire acts on the landscape. Having that information,
knowing how the reaction of the fire is going to be, or the
actual behavior of the fire's going to be when it hits these
communities, is something that will better inform our
firefighters, and make them work safer, and be able to suppress
the fires a lot easier.
Mr. Posey. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Geissler. Madam
Chair, I see my time is about to expire. I yield back. Thank
you.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you very much. Mr. Bera of
California is now recognized.
Mr. Bera. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and the Ranking
Member. Obviously this is a hugely important issue for us in
California. If I think about why I love the State of
California, you know, from hiking in the back country as a Boy
Scout when I was growing up to, you know, hiking in the Sierra
Nevadas and, you know, the Feather River, et cetera, camping
out there, a lot of those places I've experienced are now
scarred by forest fires. And, you know, I'm going to ask a
series of questions, and I'd ask the witnesses to keep their
answers short and tight so I can get through a number of these.
I want to make sure I understand, you know, on the sensing
side, this--you know, I've heard a number of the witnesses talk
about how we just haven't allocated the satellite resources
necessary. Because I don't think it's a technology issue. I
think, you know, we have infrared sensing devices, we have the
ability to put satellites in space so they're constantly
monitoring areas 24/7. We have drone capabilities that could,
you know, surveille, you know, these areas. So I want to make
sure I understand, it's not a technology issue, it's a resource
allocation issue, if I get that correct. And maybe, Mr.
Clements, is that, you know, an accurate sense?
Dr. Clements. Yeah. So let's--we can use Cal Fire
(California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) as an
example. Cal Fire has adopted the latest science and software
package available, and it allows to track resources,
firefighters, it puts the fire prediction model in there, and
so it's the state of the science, and it's actually been very
successful. So that information gets some DOD (Department of
Defense) satellites, fireguard data--so they could map it, but
those data aren't really applied to the research community. But
yes, the resources--it's a resource issue. Cal Fire's already
adopted it, and it's very successful. They have a new system,
and it's for the whole State, and it's a really good model that
should be used nationally.
Mr. Bera. Great, fantastic. So I think that that's
something we as a Committee could work on in a bipartisan way.
Question for Mr. Geissler. You know, one area that I've worked
on over the years is--we have allocated resources to better
forestry management, et cetera, but for years we would do this
thing called fire borrowing, where we would take those
resources, and then we would actually spend them to fight the
fires. I know we've tried to address the issue of fire
borrowing. I suspect we could do more on the forestry
management side to mitigate some of these forest fires, is that
correct?
Mr. Geissler. Yes, sir. The fire borrowing issue was
actually helped tremendously by some legislation that occurred
a couple of years ago. Really the emphasis right now needs to
be to take that--those dollars and really force them onto the
ground, and making sure that they are being put into the
highest priority areas that we have. A lot of times, when we're
doing forest management, I call them random acts of
conservation, where a lot of is kind of spread across the
landscape, and prioritizing the funds, making sure that they
get to the ground, is something that we should all emphasize
and work harder on.
Mr. Bera. OK, great. And, again, we were able to pass that
legislation in a bipartisan way, so I think this is another
area where we could work together as Democrats and Republicans,
you know, to really make sure we're actively managing our
forests, and mitigating some of these fires. Mr. Litzenberg,
let me ask you a question. You know, 4 or 5 years ago I had two
of my local fire chiefs, you know, who happened to be up in
Washington, DC. visiting, and, you know, just serendipitously
they started talking about the stresses that we're putting on
our firefighters, and, you know, since then I've talked to a
number of--I represent a suburban/urban community, but a lot of
our firefighters rotate up into the hills to supplement Cal
Fire, and help with these--so they're almost constantly working
during fire seasons.
And, you know, we put together a piece of legislation
called the Heroes Act a few years ago, which had passed out of
the House and this Congress, really identifying--trying to
address the pressures and stress that are leading to
firefighter suicide, firefighter PTSD (post-traumatic stress
disorder), et cetera. You know, if you could, you know, just
quickly comment on the stresses that the men and women are
under, both urban and suburban, but also the folks that are in
the Forestry Service?
Chief Litzenberg. Congressman, I really appreciate that
question, because, yeah, the stresses on our work forces at any
level, all levels of government, and private sector, is
significant, and they are full range, from behavioral stressors
all the way through physical stressors. The more that you ask
from a workforce that's already strapped, the longer you ask
them to serve in terms of hours in a day, or in terms of weeks
and months in a year, and the more exposures you give them to
smoke and human suffering, the greater stressors they have. So
we've always appreciated investments and solutions, but we are
only just beginning to discover the effects that these stresses
have on our response force. They are significant.
Mr. Bera. Well, great. And we passed that legislation out
of the House in a bipartisan. Let's hope the Senate takes it up
and sends it to the President's desk. Thank you, and with that,
I'll yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you. Ms. Kim of California is
now recognized.
Mrs. Kim. Thank you, Chair Lofgren, and Ranking Member
Lucas, for holding this hearing. I want to thank the witnesses
for being with us today too. Unfortunately wildfires in my
district, and the rest of California, where Congressman Ami
Bera and I are from, we seem to be more prevalent every year.
And with 85 percent of California in extreme drought, the
problem of longer wild fire seasons has been exacerbated by the
dryness of our landscape and the record-breaking temperatures.
And adding insult to injury, the wildfire smoke and ash
negatively impact our air quality and drinking water. And I
hope we can work in a bipartisan manner to better coordinate
our Federal efforts in predicting wildfires and adopt cutting
edge solutions to detect fires as soon as they start.
Mr. Geissler, I represent California's 39th District,
where we have, unfortunately, seen the devastating effects of
wildfires not only in my communities, but across the State of
California. So how can we ensure coordination between Federal,
State, and local communities to share available information and
tools to better predict and respond to wildfires?
Mr. Geissler. Thank you for that question, Congresswoman,
I appreciate it. The one thing that I will emphasize is that
you really should be proud of the national system and--that we
do have currently. They--the interaction that we have between
Federal, State, and local agencies is something that actually
other countries come to try to duplicate. But there's always
room for improvement. Getting to common operating systems,
being able to share data, being able to share and communicate
effectively, is really some of the items that, if we can
address those, it is--it's critical.
A lot of times it's just the difference between two
computer systems, or literally the links that we might be able
to get through broadband that prevent some of the sharing. And
so it sounds kind of basic, the need, but the willingness and
the ability to do it is there. A lot of times it is just making
sure that the connections are made, whether it be introducing
two people literally just doing that, all the way to making
sure that our systems link together and operate effectively.
The system that was just described, that Cal Fire had, is
absolutely amazing. And it's in test, and it has been doing
some great work. Part of the basis of that is its ability to
start communicating across jurisdictional authorities, and
that's what we're all looking for, is that ability to
effectively share all of these resources that we currently
have.
Mrs. Kim. So NOAA has matched the processes of designing
in the next generation of satellites in a split. So have any of
your colleagues engaged with NOAA in designing these satellites
to improve wildfire detection abilities? If not, what advice
would you give to NOAA to help make the future satellites
released more effective in wildfire detection and prevention?
Mr. Geissler. So I will say that I am unaware if any of my
colleagues have worked directly with NOAA over satellites. I
will tell you that in my past life I was able to work with the
National Severe Storm Labs in Norman, Oklahoma, and I know that
the interaction between the National Weather Service and State
agencies is very strong, and we utilize a lot of that satellite
technology, and that there have been conversations about how
effectively those could be used at the NOAA level also. But I'm
unaware of anyone that is speaking directly to them. But I do
agree it's a huge opportunity for us all.
Mrs. Kim. So you're familiar with the experimental high
resolution rapid refresh smoke model? Have you had input on the
development of any of these models, and, in your opinion, what
further research and development is needed to make existing
models more effective?
Mr. Geissler. You know, a lot of input has been really
coordinated through the Wildland Fire Leadership Council, where
we do have all of the partners at the table. So you not only
have State Foresters, but you also have mayors, and other
members of the various levels of government really having those
discussions. So it's a really powerful forum to kind of discuss
the needs and where we go forward.
So going into the future we're really looking, again, to
try to enforce that, and try to get more of the outreach.
There's a very recent memo even, in fact, between CDC and EPA
discussing wildfire smoke, and actually being able to address
all of the research and coordination that was there, and all of
that was actually made possible through the interactions that
we've had at that Wildland Fire Leadership Council. So, again,
I--it sounds like I'm a broken record related to potentially
solving a lot of these problems, but there's basic funding we
need for research, but then there's also just the social
science of communication, and then effectively making sure that
we share resources across the table.
Mrs. Kim. Thank you very much. I see my time is up, so I
yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you. Ms. Stevens is now
recognized.
Ms. Stevens. Thank you, Chair Lofgren, for presiding over
today's hearing, and thank you to our witnesses for your
incredible written and spoken testimony. Your written
testimonies in particular were quite inspiring, and I really
enjoyed reading them.
In Michigan, during this month alone, the National Weather
service has issued multiple red flag fire warnings throughout
the State, and in particular last year we saw fire outbreaks in
Northern Michigan. And, Dr. Clements, in your testimony you
focused on programs that are aimed at fire weather research and
wildfire prediction. Could you tell me more about the types of
climate smart investments in research that are needed for
better--for us to better understand the influences of wildfire
on weather, and vice versa?
Dr. Clements. Yeah. Thank you, Congresswoman, for the
question. I think one focus--what I mentioned earlier would be
this coupled fire atmosphere modeling tool, because it's the
only tool that actually allows the atmosphere to drive the
fire, and then the fire itself to drive the atmosphere, and
that's where we get our most dangerous fires, is when we have
big plumes, and you can't predict where that fire's going to
go. So investment into high resolution coupled fire atmosphere
models is critical.
And, like I mentioned earlier, it's used in--so Greece,
it's their national model. They have already adopted it.
National Center for Atmospheric research is also building on
that model. So these are the kind of tools I think that we
really need to invest in. In addition, it also predicts smoke
at very high resolution, and so you can tell a community what
the smoke concentration's going to be in an hour, tomorrow, or
the next day. So that's where I would really focus a lot of
investment, in terms of on----
Ms. Stevens. Well--and do you have recommendations, or any
examples that you know of, of how the Federal Government is
working across agencies to forecast and predict these fires and
better inform and protect the public?
Dr. Clements. Well, yeah. So, in terms of national, we
have the National Fire Danger Rating System, which allows us to
understand what the fire risk is, and so that goes across the
Nation. That's a U.S. Forest Service product. But it needs to
be a little bit more higher resolution, in terms of forecasting
certain areas. For fire behavior research, it's agency
specific. We don't really have a fire behavior prediction
system at a national level.
Chairwoman Lofgren. You're muted.
Ms. Stevens. I muted myself? OK. And then another major
priority for many of us, including myself, on this Committee
has been the effort to strengthen our STEM pipeline to ensure
that we have trained scientists and engineers who are ready to
help address the 21st century challenges that are before us.
And, Dr. McCarthy and Dr. Clements, are there skills from the
fire management side of this work that you believe would
benefit the STEM workforce, or relate to activities with STEM
workforce training, and how would you recommend those skills to
be transferred?
Dr. McCarty. Sure. I'll begin with that. So I'm not from
Ohio, I'm actually from Eastern Kentucky, and, funnily enough,
I'm married to a man from Michigan. My daughter was born in the
UP (Upper Peninsula), so I know a lot Appalachian Eastern
forest fire and--but I started, actually, as an undergrad
working for the Daniel Boone National Forest and learned a lot
of technical skills. And, as a first generation student, that
was really important for me as a pipeline into graduate school
at the University of Maryland to have that applied workforce--
working on fire risk modeling within an eastern forest because
of Southern Pine Beetle infestation.
And that was one of the reasons that I was able to get a
graduate assistantship from a small school in Appalachia, was
because I had worked on these types of on the ground management
STEM skills in computing and data science. And so I didn't come
from, you know, a very prestigious undergraduate institution,
though it is great, and so that helped me in that pipeline. So
I do think that throughout, holistically, the wildfire science
community, this is a good way to get anyone from anywhere, you
know, whether they're, you know, a woman or a man, non-binary,
to get involved, because we are welcome. This is a problem, you
know, across all 50 States. So I would just say that, and turn
it over to Dr. Clements.
Dr. Clements. Real quick. So, yeah, at San Jose State we
created a new Wildfire Sciences minor, and so that'll allow us
to bring students from a diverse background into our field to
give them some toolsets that they can take to--like, if they're
a business major, or if they're a psychology major, they'll be
aware of the wildfire problem, in addition to fire weather
training that is very critical for meteorologists to have,
which is something that we're also doing, and is a need around
the Nation. Thank you.
Ms. Stevens. Great. Thank you so much.
Chairwoman Lofgren. The gentlelady's time has expired, and
we'll turn now to Mr. Feenstra.
Mr. Feenstra. Thank you, Chairman Lofgren and Ranking
Member Lucas, and thank you to all our witnesses for your
testimony, and sharing your extensive research and your
experience with us. This question is for Mr. Geissler.
In 2020 Iowa experienced 126 wildfire incidents that
burned almost 2,200 acres. These fires can jump from burning
grasslands to agricultural fields, wreaking financial
devastation for our farmers. What is the current state of
understanding as to how a forest or a grass-based wildfire
interacts with spreads across agricultural land? What research
questions remain to be answered in this domain?
Mr. Geissler. Thank you, Congressman, for that question.
There is a lot of work that is actually ongoing relative to the
interaction between agricultural croplands and wildland fire.
For most wildland fire managers, we actually utilize a lot of
agricultural croplands because, at certain times, they are the
most irrigated spots on the planet, and we are able to use them
and--as fire control. But as you know, and others on the
Committee know, at various sages of the crop cycle, you're
going to have conditions where crops can be damaged, or that
the fuels that are remaining on the ground can carry a
wildfire.
So basically a lot of the types of fuels that we're seeing
on the ground do fit within some of our existing models. They
need to be fine tuned somewhat to--as far as the local
conditions, and a lot of the local agencies do some of that
work in-house just to correlate the types of agricultural crops
that they're currently seeing on the ground relative to the
standard fuels models that we have. But there is probably some
ongoing work that could happen there, and especially where it
comes into crop protection going forward.
Mr. Feenstra. All right. Thank you. And I've seen that a
lot with our corn crop in the fall, and soybeans, when we're
ready to harvest, and a spark is set off by a combine or
whatever, and we have a lot of devastation. I have one other
question for you. Iowa is also home to numerous lakes and
rivers, which are important for recreation, economic activities
for my constituents. When discussing wildfires we commonly
focus on the damage and destruction due to the flames and
vegetation, and to the manmade infrastructures. However, I'd
like to ask, what consequences can high intensity and high heat
wildfires have on watersheds, and what additional research do
we need to better understand these impacts?
Mr. Geissler. I'm actually very glad you brought that one
up. Post-fire recovery is something that a lot of us within the
Wildlife Fire Leadership Council and within the community are
really looking to--how do we better--do a better job of this.
Right now, if you look at resources that are available, the
Forest Service does have what they call Burn Area Response
Units, BAR teams, that can evaluate and look to those areas to
determine what are going to be the impacts, how do we recover?
More specifically a lot of that revolves around impacts to
water quality, as well as vegetation recovery.
The resources available at the State and local level are
very limited. And, in fact, in most cases, a lot of that does
not get done. But when you have the effects of a catastrophic
wildfire, or one that removes a significant wildfire, or one
that removes a significant portion of the vegetation, obviously
that's going to have an impact on water quality downstream. And
so the idea of what we need to do, how we address it, is all
being discussed right now. I know that the National Sciences
groups are actually coordinating through USGS (United States
Geological Survey) and others. We're trying to come to a better
way to effectively address these issues following some of these
fires.
And it does not matter if you're working in a mountainous
terrain, where a lot of people think it is more significant, or
more visible, I should say, but on all aspects of watersheds,
if you have these kind of damaging fires, you can impact the
water quality.
Mr. Feenstra. Yeah. I really appreciate that information.
We see that in Iowa quite a bit, where all the sudden you have
the buffer strip gets burned away, and you have significant
erosion, and there's really not a lot to stop that until the
next spring, and sort of the grass grows back, or vegetation
grows back, so it's always a concern for me. So I thank you for
your responses, and thank you to all of the testimony of each
one of you, and I yield my time back. Thank you.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you. Ms. Stansbury is now
recognized.
Ms. Stansbury. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you
so much for holding this important hearing this morning. I also
want to thank especially Chief Litzenberg for being here this
morning from Santa Fe County, which is from my home State in
New Mexico. Thank you for your service, and to all of our
local, State, county, Federal, and tribal firefighters. Thank
you for your work on the front lines protecting our
communities. And I also want to thank you for sharing your
expertise this morning.
So I think it goes without saying that addressing wildfire
is not only a matter of protecting our public safety, and the
ecological well-being of our forests and our communities, but
in New Mexico it's also a matter of national security because a
significant number of our forestlands also abut on our National
Laboratories, and our Federal military installations as well.
But it's also the single largest threat to water and drought
resilience in New Mexico, and much of the West as well, as well
as our future climate adaptation and economic security. And, as
was noted by Chief Litzenberg's testimony, we're already
spending billions of dollars a year at the Federal, and local,
and tribal levels to both suppress fire and fight fires across
the West.
So one of the things that I wanted to talk a little bit
about today is our forest science. So we focused a lot here
today on remote sensing, fire weather, warning systems and
hazards, but one of the most significant and important ways
that we can address and mitigate the catastrophic fires that
are affecting the West is through forest management, and this
is especially true in New Mexico, where a lot of really
exciting climate and forest management science is happening. So
we're seeing a lot of really incredible partnerships between
our tribes and pueblos, our local county officials, nonprofit
organizations like the Nature Conservancy, our National
Laboratories, who are doing really exciting, complex modeling
around forest dynamics, carbon sequestration, soil, and ways in
which we can actually target our forest treatments.
And, in fact, one of the things that's most exciting to me
about have Chief Litzenberg here this morning is that he was
intimately involved in these activities in what is called the
Santa Fe Fire Shed Program, which is a collaborative of all of
these different programs, and so my question is actually for
our Chief. Mr. Litzenberg, I wonder if you could talk a little
bit about the Santa Fe Fire Shed efforts, and share with us how
the science was leveraged, and partnerships were leveraged, and
how we might scale this exciting collaborative model across the
West.
Chief Litzenberg. I sure can, Congresswoman, and, again,
very much appreciate that question, because it is near and very
dear to me. The Santa Fe--the Greater Santa Fe Fire Shed
Coalition is a very successful collaboration, and it was built
from the ground up around the premise that if you bring the
right people to the table, much like you have, I think, on this
panel, who can put their two cents into the mix, you often get
a product that's much better than a single person or a single
organization could've come up with.
And in that coalition we have all levels of government, we
have nonprofit, we have scientists, we have people from the
labs, and we even have people who don't necessarily agree with
what we're doing. And we have regular meetings to talk about
how do we make our watershed and our forests healthier and
safer, and ultimately protect our communities, both for
recreation, for life safety, and prevent the large fires, and
those things that--we've talked about the smoke, we've talked
about the post-fire debris. They've got huge destructive
potential to not only primary effects, but secondary and
tertiary effects.
And anything you can do to research and create data on
those things that are modifiable, and toss them into a room
where smart minds can think together and come up with
solutions, much like the Santa Fe Fire Shed Coalition, I think
replication of that across the West and the Nation is much in
order. Thanks for asking that question.
Ms. Stansbury. Thank you, Chief Litzenberg, and I would
really encourage my colleagues--I know many in the fire
community are very familiar with these efforts in New Mexico,
but it's a really exciting model, and the Rio Grande Watershed
efforts that are being put into restoring our forests are
really a model for the Nation. And, finally, I just want to say
that there's a coupled opportunity, while we're talking about
fire mitigation, to talk about carbon sequestration. A recent
study by the Climate Alliance in New Mexico showed that
reforestation of burned catastrophic fire areas has a huge
potential to help capture carbon, so I really think that that's
an important part of the science that we need to be introducing
into the conversation. And with that, Madam Chairwoman, I yield
back. Thank you so much.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you very much. Now the gentleman
from California, Mr. Obernolte, is recognized.
Mr. Obernolte. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman, and
thank you to all of our panelists. I represent a very fire
prone and very rural section of the Western United States, and
so the prevention of these wildfires is of critical importance
to the people that I represent, and I know a lot of the people
in this room share that concern.
One of the things that I was struck by in the testimony
from all four of our witnesses is the inadequacy of the current
satellite data that we're getting, both in terms of geospatial
resolution and in terms of temporal resolution, and, frankly, I
had no idea that it was still this bad, to be talking about
geospatial resolution of a kilometer, and temporal resolution
of only one or two frames per day is clearly not going to be
adequate to generate the kind of wildfire models that we need
to predict wildfire behavior, and certainly is not going to be
as useful as it could be to be able to give early warning when
a new wildfire starts. So that's what I'd like to ask some
questions about.
And I probably could pick any of the panelists, but, Dr.
McCarty, I was struck by your testimony about this. Can you
talk a little bit about what the prospects are for improved
satellite imaging, if we have anything in the pipeline, and in
particular maybe talk about the fact that--I know that we're
talking about geostationary satellites mostly here, but the
state-of-the-art in satellites now is low Earth orbit
satellites, which might solve your spatial resolution problems
also. Is there some prospect that we could use some of the
assets that we have to solve this problem?
Dr. McCarty. Yes, and thank you, Congressman, for that
question. I do think that we have a lot of work going on at
NASA, at NOAA, I know NIST even had a small workshop around
this a few years ago, of data fusion, of thinking about how to,
you know, intercorporate various polar orbiting satellites,
including low Earth orbit, and some of our commercial
platforms, as well as our open source geostationary, to provide
better temporal resolution. It's more complicated with spatial
resolution because you just kind of have to accept the data as
it is, how it was engineered. If it was engineered at 10
kilometers, it's 10 kilometers, and you just have to take that
location, and then compare it to something that's 10 meters in
resolution.
We've also had, in the last 10 years, and, you know, much
credit to NASA, USGS, and NOAA for their collaboration with the
European Space Agency (ESA), with the Indian Space Agency, with
the Japanese Space Agency, in trying to improve some of our
other collaborations so that we have open source access to
their platforms, and are developing, you know, kind of a cross-
pollination coordination.
And, to be fair, sometimes our satellite systems are
developed because they are meeting the needs of the community,
and not just the fire community. Often they're--they need to
meet agriculture and food security, they need to meet
biodiversity and forest management. They need to think about
water quality, as well as the atmospheres and the lithospheres
as well, and so sometimes what we need for fire will get maybe
pushed to the end, or at least the resolution will be
downgraded a bit because there are these other components that
also need to be captured in the same platform. And so I do
think that NOAA's GeoXO, which is in collaboration with NASA,
is one way to move forward. They did hold a workshop last
summer with local, State, and Federal level fire researchers
and practitioners and management to get their input on that.
But even that system, which was--an RFP (request for proposals)
was issued, and two contractors were selected earlier this
spring, its highest resolution will be half a kilometer.
And so, really, we need to think about, you know, setting
an agenda where the--we want spatial resolution that is helpful
both tactically and strategically for fire management. And if
I--I will return to you for--if you have further questions.
Mr. Obernolte. Well, thank you. I completely agree. I'm
horrified that we don't have access to higher resolution data
than that. And as a scientist myself I can tell you there's no
way you can create meaningful prediction models based on that.
And, as you say, we've got all of these high speed aerial
assets now for fighting the fires, it would be very helpful to
have real time information about when the fire started and
where. So I'm hopeful that we in Congress can help you to solve
this problem and get access to this higher resolution data,
because then we can, as you say, take the next step, work with
the National Science Foundation, and catalyze some more
research into this topic. But I see my time has expired. Thank
you to all of our panelists, and I yield back, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you. Dr. Foster is recognized.
Mr. Foster. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Clements, in your
testimony you stated your team has deployed to nearly 40
wildfires in California with specialized equipment, including
mobile Doppler, lidar, and radar assets, and that these tools
have provided a lot of insights into the dynamic of plume-
dominated wildfires, and how the fires and the atmosphere
interact with each other on the large scale. You know, back in
my district in Illinois, last week we had some tornadoes, and
it was amazing, when you looked at the data that was available
in real time for--from lidar system and Doppler radar. The--my
wife and I basically, you know, came to a--got into a safe
area, turned on the TV, and we could watch the tornado vortex
as it moved across neighborhoods just south of my house.
And so I was wondering--you know, I'm very interested in
the technological developments and sensors, particularly cost
reduction, that would help us have a much higher density of
sensors on there. And so, in regards to that, you know,
roughly--the equipment that you deploy, how much does it cost,
if you just had to buy another one of those?
Dr. Clements. Thank you for your question, Congressman. So
the radar is a special radar. It's a K-band, it's custom made.
It's not that expensive. It's about 600, $700,000----
Chairwoman Lofgren. OK.
Mr. Clements [continuing]. Not including the truck and all
that stuff, and that's probably a relatively low cost, high
resolution Doppler radar. The lidars are even less expensive.
They're about $350,000. And so, you know, these aren't super
expensive instruments, but to set up a network of those, it
would be somewhat costly. Now, the advantage of also the lidar
is it allows us to look at vertical wind profiles, which is
really critical in downslope windstorms, and understanding the
onset of critical wind for fire weather, particularly in
California, with the public safety power shutoffs, and so
there's a need for those.
Just to get back to the surface weather station
discussion, California has more surface weather stations than
any other place on the planet because of the utilities. They've
invested a lot into meteorological data for their modeling. And
so I think we can down--get the costs down if we build more
instruments, or we can use new engineering technologies to
build these instruments better and cheaper. So there is a way
to use it. In addition, we also have the National Radar Network
for the--NOAA Radar Network that we use for wildfire
observations as well. So there's a lot of things that we can
do.
Mr. Foster. Yeah. I think one of the things we have to get
better at as a nation is making high tech stuff cheaper in
large quantity, and I think you might be able to bootstrap this
if there was just an agreement that we're going to employ--
deploy, you know, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of
equipment like you deploy all over the country, and you might
find the cost curve goes down pretty sharply.
Is there a consensus on the types of data points and the
collection assets that you'd like? I know you mentioned ground-
based stations. You know, you can imagine drone swarms that
come in over fires, maybe just more investment in satellites,
or maybe more investment in just the inventories of all the
consumables that are on the ground? Is there an agreement on
what you'd really like, or is that something that's under
discussion?
Dr. Clements. Well, I think in terms of the fire weather
community, we're probably in agreement that we need more
atmospheric observations, but then we also need to understand
what the fire's doing at every instant. One technology that's
coming out, small radars that are cheaper that you can put on
power poles or utility assets, so that way you can scan
everything, versus just the National Radar Network. So using
smaller radars that are getting more cost effective could be a
really good asset in the future.
Mr. Foster. All right. And could someone say a little bit
about the collaboration--the state of collaboration,
particularly with DOD? You know, I don't think I'm giving away
any national security secrets to say that we spend a lot of
time looking for infrared flares for various purposes. And so I
was wondering, do you hit a roadblock where you say, well, you
know, we could give you information, but then we don't want the
bad guys to know we have this capability, so we won't tell you,
or is there really a pretty good collaboration in real time
when there's a serious fire hazard?
Dr. Clements. Well, I guess I could take that from my
knowledge. What I know is that there's a fireguard product that
maps the fire in real time for fire agencies. Those data are
not publicly available, but the technology's--is there, so, you
know, increasing that collaboration could be very useful--or
using that technology in a more public framework would be
beneficial to the research community.
Mr. Foster. OK. That sounds like it could be a job for
Congress. The other possible collaboration might be insurance
companies. Do they look at detailed fire modeling to come up
with their insurance race on--rates on a house-by-house level?
Are they big players in this?
Dr. Clements. Yeah. We're working with some insurance
companies now, as well as the utilities. I mean, there's so
much investment needed in a better understanding of the fire
problem, and so insurance companies are definitely interested
in the risk, for sure.
Mr. Foster. OK. Thank you. My time is up, and yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you. Mr. Webster is recognized.
Mr. Webster. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for holding this
meeting. Chief Litzenberg, you mentioned some items or fields
of future focus in your report, and things like remote sensing,
or fire mapping, things like that. Which of those would be the
highest priority?
Chief Litzenberg. Congressman, thanks for that question.
It is a tough one for me to answer because, in my view, all of
these are somewhat related. And--so if you're asking for a
priority, it is a difficult one. I can say that the creation of
a sensing network--I'll go back to the discussion I had a few
minutes ago about Santa Fe Fire Shed Coalition. Part of the
success of that is a lot of viewpoints. And, to me, you get a
better view when you're getting a lot of viewpoints, whether
it's social science, or whether it's technology and data. So
the more we can create a sensor network that is both ground-
based and up to the satellites that integrates and gives us
real time forecasting and mapping, that, to me, is a huge
priority.
But that actually falls into some of the other priorities,
like putting that data in a single useable place, where all
levels of government are sharing data significantly, using that
data to create situational awareness in real time for boots on
the ground, and ultimately a network of communication that
links all of these priorities together. Again, in summary, it's
hard for me to prioritize because they work together, but
that's probably how I would do so, in--since you asked me to do
so.
Mr. Webster. Thank you for that. Last week we had the new
NASA Administrator, Senator Nelson, and he was here, we were
talking about collaboration, and how much is there, and how
it's working and so forth. He was pretty confident that it was
a lot of collaboration, at least from NASA in the areas of
hurricane tracking, and firefighting, floods, so forth. My
question would be, this whole idea of remote sensing, should
there be, or are there already, ways where that information is
being coordinated and communicated to local and State foresters
in communities to improve prevention of--and also mitigation in
the area of forest fires? Do you know anything about that?
Chief Litzenberg. Congressman, I can give you my opinion
from being somebody at the local level. I've always had the
impression that that data exists, and that it should be
reachable. And in places where there are good relationships it
often is, but it is really dependent on the caliber of those
relationships. There are places nationally--we've referenced
Wildland Fire Leadership Council, we've referenced National
Interagency Fire Center--where integration is happening, and I
think it's happening well and thoroughly. But it's not always
getting down to the community level, where decisions about
prevention and mitigation can be made appropriately, and it's
potentially a huge place for future improvements.
Mr. Webster. Well, that's something we're going to have to
work on. I yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Gentleman yields back. Mr. Sherman of
California's recognized.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you. I want to thank the Committee for
having this hearing. I take it personally, having been
evacuated from my home just a couple of years ago with the
Saddle Ridge Fire, representing a city that goes right up
against the city limits of Los Angeles. Mr. Geissler, in your
written testimony you note that the buildup of hazardous fuels
on many of our public manage--publicly managed lands are at
historic levels, and you further note that past management
activities have actually made our public lands even more
vulnerable. How can research improve the maintenance issues so
as to reduce the likelihood of fires like those we've seen in
California?
Mr. Geissler. Thank you, Congressman, for that question.
And, you know, as you said, our forests and landscapes are
really at a point where their resiliency is questionable in
many places. Science and research has really been doing a lot
of work relative to how we best turn the corner on these
landscapes. There's always ongoing research related to fuels
and what is on the ground. There's a lot of work within FIA,
the Forest Inventory and Analysis, world where essentially
we're learning more and more about what the conditions are,
what the state of our forest is, so that we can better address
the issue that's there. And the--I will say the Forest
Inventory and Analysis Program through the Forest Service is
one of those things that is kind of an unsung hero, providing
us a lot of longstanding data information related to how our
forests and landscapes have changed over time.
So it's there. It's ongoing below the surface, and it does
not get a lot of notice from those of us that are outside of
the community. But making sure that we have effective funding
for Forest Inventory and Analysis, and then programs like the
Joint Fire Sciences Program that helps coordinate the research
utilizing some of that data is really some of the critical
needs.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you. Firefighters, emergency officials,
Dr. Clements, you indicated how they and community leaders can
struggle with disaster management. Wildfire season is
increasingly becoming year-round. Our firefighters are being
asked to work impossible hours in hazardous conditions. Dr.
Clements, how can we better use scientific modeling and the
enormous amount of data that have been collected to better
predict the number of firefighting personnel that we will need?
Dr. Clements. Thank you for your question, Congressman. So
that's a difficult question. So what we can do in the future
is, using some of these state-of-the-art fire prediction models
to look at what we should expect, how big are these going to
be, given, you know, changes in wind, changes in temperature,
and fuels. And so that could give us an idea of what resources
and suppression needs are going to be required in the future.
So that's one way to use some of these new models that are very
high resolution to look at what those needs could be in the
future.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you, and I also want to take a minute
to thank the Appropriations Subcommittee for funding a project,
or recommending the funding of a project, in my district to
replace invasive and highly flammable shrubs with native and
fire-resistant shrubs right there in the area of the Sesnon and
Saddle Ridge Fires that we've suffered through in recent years.
I thank you for your comments, and I yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. The gentleman yields back. Dr. Baird
is recognized.
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Madam Chair, and Ranking Member
Lucas, for holding this hearing. I always learn something in
this Committee, and so I really appreciate the professionalism
and the expertise of our witnesses, and I thank them for being
here today. I'm going to continue on a little bit with the
conversation my colleague Mr. Webster was having, and so my
questions are going to be to the--Chief Litzenberg, as well as
to Mr. Geissler. But, Chief, you mentioned in your testimony
you highlighted that collaboration among local fire departments
with Federal research, and working with NSF, NIST, or NIST, and
NASA needs to further grow to improve the Nation's wildfire
response. And then you followed that with eight fields of
future focus on this matter, such as remote sensing, fire
mapping, and others. So, in that context, then I want to extend
my question to be how can we use these tools that you mention
there to really increase the active forest management and the
implementation of fuel treatments? Because I think those have a
real impact on being able to prevent many of these wildfires.
And so, with that, Chief, if you would care to comment, I would
appreciate that.
Chief Litzenberg. Thanks for the question, Congressman.
And, yeah, I'll give you my perspective, again, as a local
responder, and I think my perspective is probably shared by
many responders and fire chiefs. I said it a few minutes ago,
and I'll say it again, I do believe that there is a lot of data
that's being created, and a lot of very smart people, many of
whom are here today, who are doing great things around fire
science, and often the missing link is how do I, as a community
responder, how do I, as a Fire Chief, get that data in a place
that's useable, and then use it to do prevention and mitigation
primarily?
I often look at communities, and we have the term fire
death communities now, but I often look at communities as an
organism, much like a human, and if you look at your body over
the years, you've counted on somebody to get data about you,
whether it's doing brain scans when you've got a headache,
whether it's looking at your heart when you have chest pain,
you know, evaluating your blood. And you get data points, and
then you have somebody who looks at those data points, and
gives you a recommendation, and what do you do about that? And
what do you do, in terms of prevention, to make sure that the
ultimate effect is not catastrophic on your body?
Communities and ecosystems are no different, and we're
creating data points, and, in my opinion, what we really need
is a place where that data is collected in one single place,
where everybody is dumping everything that they're learning
into a single place, and then there's somebody, or a committee,
or a group, or an organization, much like a doctor, who's
telling me, as a local community, what do I do with that data?
How can I make my forest healthier? How can I make community
safer, and ultimately how can I provide public safety to those
who want to live safely within the urban interface?
Mr. Baird. Thank you. Mr. Geissler, would you care to add
to that?
Mr. Geissler. Yes, and I--and Chief Litzenberg really hit
the nail on the head. It's the availability and the utilization
of all of this data that is being created, and making sure that
we have the ability to share it across the various
jurisdiction. And it has happened in some places. I can give
you an example of--within my own State where we utilize data
from Federal, State, and local, who we have come together, and
are sharing it across jurisdictional boundaries to develop a
forest health strategy for our State, prioritizing all of the
landscapes across all jurisdictions. And that is in
collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service, State agencies, and
locals, and it ties back to our forest health management, and
then we also have used it on our wildfire strategy that we're
building out. But it takes a lot of interagency discussions,
and it takes an environment where there's a shared mission on
how we need to address, or what the end goal should be. And
that, again, much like Erik said, is--I--a lot of folks are--
organizations are essentially working on their own and
discovering things, and that leads to sometimes reinventing
wheels, and--to the point of getting it all to one location,
getting the information on how this can be used, collected,
analyzed, and then sent out and communicated is just absolutely
critical.
Mr. Baird. Thank you very much. And I'm out of time, so I
yield back, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you very much. Mr. Beyer is
recognized.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Madam Chair, very much. This is
fascinating stuff, and I'd like to start with Dr. McCarty,
because the--NASA's--the Space and Aeronautic Subcommittee of
this Committee held a few--hearing a few weeks ago on NASA
climate science work, and we heard an awful lot about the
growing commercial remote sensing industry's ability to support
NASA's earth science activities, but primarily through data
buys. But the hearing also identified questions about
commercial data transparency, accessibility, license
restrictions, that could have implications for free and open
access to federally funded earth science data. So what are your
perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of commercial
remote sensing data sets in wildfire research?
Dr. McCarty. Thank you for the question, Congressman. I
mean, commercial data is proprietary, and so when we--and I,
you know, full disclosure, have been a NASA-funded PI who has
access to those commercial data buys, but they must be in the
regions in which my--the project that I tentatively, you know,
applied for has been selected. And so if I--for instance, for
FIREX-AQ, which was a partnership between NOAA and NASA, I was
on the NASA side, I was able to look at commercial data sets,
and still I'm able to look at commercial data sets, for regions
and fires that we flew the DC-8 through the smoke plumes. But
if I wanted to expand that to other States where we didn't fly,
that would not necessarily be permitted. I would need to go
back, and request, and ask why.
I would also say that the commercial data is of high
quality. It's definitely an add-on. It's one of those data
fusion products we want to include. It requires a high level of
computing, and data science, and coding skills to implement.
Our NASA and NOAA Earth observation products are often some of
the best in the world. They're plug and play in a lot of ways,
and our commercial data sets are not quite there, but that's
not necessarily their business model, so they haven't been
given the right incentive, stick or carrot, to develop those
products. They would be something that would fill in that gap
if we want multiple--daily-imagery. But to really get at some
of the fire weather, you need kind of, like, a living--a
weather system, a geostationary system, where you're getting
something every 15 minutes, half hour.
Mr. Beyer. All the time, yeah. Let me ask a larger, more
existential question. It seems that fire science has changed an
awful lot since I was a kid. Smokey the Bear--I was impressed
that we heard that 78 percent, or 84 percent, are still human
caused. But back then, no fires, and we--and then later on I
served for a number of years on the House National Resources
Committee, where my--some of my friends were like, we need to
do much more forestry, because we have to clear out all the
trees, and that way they won't burn down. And then you had our
most recent President talking about raking the forests in
Norway. Where exactly are--and I know climate change has
complicated all of this immensely. And you--there--I know you
have projects with prescribed fires, but is there a larger
scientific sense of how best to manage forests yet, with
respect to fires?
Dr. McCarty. We have, I would say, a coalescing
convergence. There's always more--science is, you know,
frustratingly like that, there's always more to know. However,
what we have learned are--you know, North America's a fire
adapted ecosystem. Many of our natural areas are adapted to
burn, and so to function they must burn. The fire will come, as
Steven Pyne, the fire historian, has shown time and time again.
Prescribed burning is one of those forest management
techniques--like you were saying, there were no fires, right?
Well, that's because there was active fire suppression. We're
now in a fire deficit, where we have many of our wildland areas
that aren't having enough fires, and so we need more prescribed
burning. And that's when we talk about indigenous burning,
prescribed burning.
And we have some systems that burn too much, in--close to
our WUI, close to our agricultural systems, but some of
rangeland systems need to be burned more, and so it becomes
this very complex--what I like to call a patchwork quilt of
what the ecosystem really looks like, and so management and
science has to really view that complexity, and that includes
our fuel systems. Not just thinking of it as all grasses,
having buildings, and so on and so forth. Back to you.
Mr. Beyer. Madam Chair, with the--Chief Litzenberg, do you
have anything to add in the last 20 seconds?
Chief Litzenberg. I think that was a solid answer, and I
agree entirely. Nothing significant to add.
Mr. Beyer. Great. I look forward to the science continuing
to evolve. Thank you very much. I--Madam Chair, I yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you, and the gentleman from
Texas, Mr. Weber, is recognized.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Madam Chair. This will be for Mr.
Clements, to start with. The State with the most fires, is that
data readily available?
Dr. Clements. Yeah. Those data are nationally compiled,
and so it can be easily accessed, generally.
Mr. Weber. Did I understand, in your exchange with Bill
Foster, I thought you said the data wasn't a given. And what
data was that? Do you remember that exchange?
Dr. Clements. No. I don't think that was----
Mr. Weber. OK. Then I'll go to Mr. Geissler. Do we have--
you had a discussion with Daniel Webster. Do we have enough
interagency interaction, and is there somebody that tracks
that, and how successful that's been?
Mr. Geissler. I--we have exceptional interagency
cooperation at both the national, regional, and State levels.
There--we have a lot of discussions among the State foresters,
the emergency managers, on how we can improve it, along with
our Federal partners at FEMA, and the USDA (United States
Department of Agriculture), Forest Service, and DOI, and
others. The collaboration revolves around the National
Interagency Fire Center in Boise, as well as the Wildland Fire
Leadership Council, and we really try to go through what is an
ongoing continuous improvement kind of cycle with relation to
that.
The--all of the agreements that are in place, in fact,
whether it be a master agreement between Federal agencies and
States, or numerous State-to-State or State-to-local
agreements, all usually have some form of an assessment piece
that's involved in it, whereby we take a look at how it's
working, and try to improve on that.
Mr. Weber. Has there been a discussion about whether or
not if you widen the rights of ways in some of these heavily
forested areas, that that would reduce some of the wildfires?
Mr. Geissler. Those typically are occurring at the local
and State level as we do our wildfire prevention planning. You
know, there's a lot of work that, even within your home State
of Texas, with the community wildfire preparedness planning,
whereby you take and look at a community and determine what
would be the best way to mitigate the risk of--to that
community, as well as mitigate the risk to the natural
resources around it. And those are all part of kind of a
process that's utilized that we try to get done, obviously,
before the fire gets accomplished. Texas, in fact, has an
excellent program that they're utilizing in order to have those
discussions.
And, to your point, I mean, a lot of it occurs all across
the United States, across all levels of government, and within
the local communities, and even private citizens. A lot of it--
but a lot of it involves just giving a framework of how to get
it done, and that's where a lot of funding and research could
be utilized just on the social sciences side of how we get this
information better understood and accepted by our public, as
well as funding on facilitation and process in order to get
these things done. If there's a place where we say we need to
really accelerate on a curve, that is one place that you could
point to.
Mr. Weber. What State would you say has the most
wildfires?
Mr. Geissler. I think the last time we checked it was--I
think if you look at sheer numbers it was California. But, to
the point of Dr. Clemens, all of that information is readily
available through the National Interagency Fire Center, as we
all report our fires up through the systems that are involved
to answer that----
Mr. Weber. Follow-up question to that is would most of
those fires have been caused by utility companies? I think one
of the questions I had--we talked about insurance--and some of
the testimony earlier about insurance companies were extremely
interested, energy companies, power companies were extremely
interested. Would you agree that those--well, not the insurance
companies, but maybe the utility companies, lines sparking
together in high wind areas, for example, is that probably the
major cause of, for example, California's fires?
Mr. Geissler. Actually, the major cause is humans. We do
sometimes very foolish things, whether it be dragging a chain
when we're towing a trailer, or lighting campfires. The Smokey
Bear message that we talked about earlier still applies in many
cases. And the causes that you're talking about, they do occur.
You know, I'm not going to deny that we don't have equipment
sparking with utilities, but we are working with the utilities,
trying to best figure out ways to minimize that risk that's out
there. But if you ask for the--purely what is the biggest
cause, it's you and I, essentially, when you look at the cause
data.
Mr. Weber. So are you saying this world would be a really
good place if it wasn't for the humans?
Mr. Geissler. Well, we interact with our environment and
change it all the time, and I think us being better aware of
what we can do to prevent that would be a much better place.
Sometimes we don't think about what we're doing, and it takes
just some simple awareness to really make us take that extra
step. Most people don't realize that they can cause a spark
mowing their lawn and set a fire that easily until it happens
to them. And we really do want them to understand, and want
everybody to understand, the risk that you're taking, and how
you can help us.
Mr. Weber. Well, I thank you for that. I appreciate your
indulgence, Madam Chair. I yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Gentleman yields back. Jerry McNerney
is recognized.
Mr. McNerney. Well, thank the Chair, and I want to thank
the witnesses. You know, this is really important to me, to my
district, to people in the western part of the country. I won't
be able to be as entertaining as Mr. Weber in my questions, but
I'll proceed anyway.
Dr. Clemens, thank you again. In your testimony you
mentioned that we need more coupling of ecological conditions,
atmospheric conditions, and general fire behavior for models to
more accurately identify climate change's impact on modern
wildfire dynamics. Can you elaborate a bit more on how Federal
science agencies can be helpful in promoting this type of
research?
Dr. Clements. Thank you for your question, Congressman.
Yeah, so, a lot of this--these couple atmosphere fire models
are--they're kind of--they're becoming operational, but they're
not national, and they are very high computing--they take a lot
of high computing resources. You need supercomputing centers to
run these models. It's not that they can't be done, but you
just need the resources, so funding centers to do that, or
funding teams to run those models operationally for regions
would be probably the best way to invest into getting those
models operations.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Chief Litzenberg, the Federal
science agencies have limited or no role in the Federal--with
the Federal agencies that coordinate Federal fire response. How
would you recommend Federal science agencies be better
incorporated into Federal fire--wildfire response efforts?
Chief Litzenberg. Congressman, thanks for that question. I
believe that the best way to be integrated is to use existing
mechanisms, because there are mechanisms that are used, that
are used successfully. Perhaps they could even be improved in
this avenue, but they're already there. The Joint Fire Science
Program is one that's taking good science, putting it in a
place that's usable to practitioners. The Wildland Fire
Leadership Council, and the National Interagency Fire Center,
are also places where integrations are occurring, and all we
really need to do is put a focus on new and existing research,
and how it can be used and applied toward emerging issues.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Dr. Clements again, in your
testimony you talk about both the importance and difficulty of
collecting routine meteorological data on wildfire incidents.
Do you think there's a role for Federal science agencies to
play in collecting more of this data?
Dr. Clements. Yes, I do. I think that we could--like I
mentioned before, instrument aircraft, we could deploy more
resources. Right now the National Weather Service Incident
Meteorologist Program, which is, like, over 50 meteorologists
that go to active wildfires and other disasters around the
country, they deploy, and they can request surface weather
stations, but it takes a while to get those stations in place
because they have to be driven out from a location and set up
in the field. And so we could potentially have other types of
technology, wind profilers, Doppler radar networks, that are
higher resolution that could be either deployed rapidly, like
in a storm chasing manner, or through teams that are already
established with the incident command team, or the fire
incident. So, yeah, I think the Federal Government could
actually play a big role.
It's just like hurricane hunters. We have those aircraft
that go sample those hurricanes, to collect the meteorological
data, but we don't have that for wildfire. And it's the same
type of information that we need to better model and predict
what the fire's going to do, and how the atmosphere is playing
a role on that fire's spread.
Mr. McNerney. And data standardization would be helpful
too, I imagine.
Dr. Clements. Yeah, we have to have standards in the data
as well. Particularly in some of the, like--the remote sensing
data, because a lot of these images that you can get from,
like, private vendors is saturated, and so that means that
it's, like--you're not getting the accurate temperature, you're
not really seeing what the fire's doing. You're seeing kind of
a blob on an image. So having better data standards would be
improvement for what we have currently.
Mr. McNerney. Well, as co-Chair of the House Artificial
Intelligence Caucus with my colleague Mr. Gonzales, one of the
areas that I'm interested in is how AI (artificial
intelligence) can be used in wildfire response. Chief
Litzenberg, can you respond to that?
Chief Litzenberg. You know, I can do my best to respond to
that, as the non-scientist for the practitioner side. Anything
that we can use to take existing information and create it in a
usable fashion, for those of us who are actually doing the
boots on the ground practitioner work, to me, is a bonus. And
if that includes the use of AI, then I say we're in. That's
something that should be explored into the future.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Madam Chair, I'm going to yield
back, then.
Chairwoman Lofgren. The gentleman yields back. Mr.
Gonzalez is recognized.
Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to our
panel for being with us today, and sharing your perspectives.
Mr. Geissler, I want to start with you, and I want to talk
about tree spatial patterning. So I'd like to get your thoughts
on this. New research indicates that trees in spatial patterns
are more fire resistant than those uniformly or evenly spaced.
Should we be encouraging more managers to adopt spatial
reforestation, or is more research and testing of this method
required?
Mr. Geissler. Thank you for the question. I'm not as
familiar with the latest research in this that has come out. I
can tell you, only from a fire manager's perspective, that
obviously, changing the spatial relationship among stems or
trees in a forest, obviously changes fire behavior
characteristics. But then, along the same lines, I do know that
in our Southern States, where we do a lot of intensive
silviculture related to, like, plantation forestry, those
actually have created issues in the past because of the nature
of the change in fuel spread. So I would have to do a little
bit more research to give you a solid answer on that, and I'm
willing to follow up with you on it.
Mr. Gonzalez. Great. Thank you. And my next question was
how can Federal science agencies assist in these efforts, so I
guess I'd turn it back to you. Maybe it's just we need more
research on it, but I'll let you answer.
Mr. Geissler. Well, you know, and, again, as this type of
research comes out, the modification of fuel profiles in
general, whether it be through spatial changes between trees or
the removal of lighter fuels, and percentages related to that,
all of that stuff is--are items that foresters and natural
resource managers are looking at all the time. Not just from
the standpoint of fire management, but also from the standpoint
of just pure forest health and resiliency, to other things like
insects and disease.
So, you know, obviously, increasing and improving the
research availability is always important, as well as--I'm
going to kind of always tie back to the making of that research
and information available to the practitioners on the ground.
And sometimes that--it requires more of a social scientist to
come up with how to get that best across. But I agree that more
work is needed.
Mr. Gonzalez. Thanks. And then a somewhat related
question, perhaps. Obviously, the United States isn't the only
country that's dealing with wildfires. There's been high
profile issues with wildfires across the globe in various ways.
What learnings, if any, can we take from how this is managed in
other parts of the world that we should be applying to how we
deal with wildfires in the U.S.?
Mr. Geissler. There's actually a continuous sharing along
those lines also. Even within my own State we partner with our
fellow firefighters in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and
others on the Canadian side, as we share resources across the
border all the time. And there's obviously discussion of the
tools that we use, be it--everything from how we manage our
firefighter safety to the tactics that we're utilizing.
You've obviously--or should've heard of where we bring
firefighters in from other countries, and even the Forest
Service has gone to other countries like Australia. And,
through all of those, we have a sharing environment. That is
one of the foundational elements within the wildland
firefighting community, is to maintain that learning
environment as we go and use different tools and techniques.
And there's the Wildfire Lessons Learned Center and others that
actually helps to disseminate this information.
So the experience of, again, getting the right people in
the room with the shared experience that I believe Erik spoke
to earlier, you get a lot of people in the room talking about
the same thing, and you can come up with some fairly amazing
ideas. And we have made changes to our systems, and tweaked our
processes, in order to get better just because of the
experiences that we've had with our fellow firefighters from
other countries.
Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you. That's very helpful. I appreciate
your testimony and responses, and I'll yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Gentleman yields back. Mr. Casten is
recognized.
Mr. Casten. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to our
witnesses. Dr. Clements, I'd like to start with you, and one of
the things that's always sort of struck me as the hardest thing
to deal with on climate change sociologically is that there's
all these nonlinearities, and we just do a bad job of
anticipating accelerating trends. Obviously that contributes to
the increasing numbers and severity of wildfires that we've
seen, but if you look just at wildfire science, as you try to
predict what's going to happen over the next 5, 10 years, are
there major nonlinearities that are either feedback loops
making it worse, or that might damp it, with respect to
wildfire science, that we should be thinking of on the
expectation that we're probably not anticipating those things
very well either?
Dr. Clements. Yeah. Thank you for your question,
Congressman. Yeah, so, in terms of climate change and feedback
loops, as we change--as the environment gets warmer, we're
going to change the fuel structures, we're going to change our
landscape so that can impact, maybe for the better at times,
different types of fuel structures so we can convert some--
after fire we can convert some forest to maybe grasslands, and
that could lessen extreme fire, but it can make it more
ignitable as well. So there are feedbacks. It's not really my
expertise, so I could look into that a little bit more and get
back to you.
But I think one thing that we need to consider, in terms
of climate change, is that these trends--you know, the
predictions are--you know, we have to continue to look at
attributions, you know, what's really causing all these things.
We know it's climate change, we know it's forest management, we
know it's climate induced drought, and weather, so--but we can
still put more science into fine tuning what those attributions
are, in terms of what's going to happen in the future. We could
use high resolution modeling in a different state, so we can
use 2050 climate scenarios, and model what fires are going to
look like then. That's something that we're planning on doing,
so that could be one way to kind of diagnose the changes.
Mr. Casten. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I've got to get
two more questions. Dr. McCarty, you had mentioned in your
comments about, you know, we're seeing wildfires in places like
the Smoky Mountains that we haven't thought about before. With
these trends, are there areas or types of fires that you think
are going to be more likely in the future that we need to be
thinking about and preparing for?
Dr. McCarty. Sure. Thank you for that question,
Congressman. In fact, the Eastern Forest used to be called the
Asbestos Forest by many professional foresters because they
said that they wouldn't burn, but that is, in fact, not
actually--that was not true, it's just they have a longer fire
return interval. So we will expect, as the Southeast becomes
hotter and drier, particularly in our upland areas, that fire
risk will increase. And this is a WUI question, a wildland
urban interface question. We've had a lot of people move in to
places like Asheville, you know, Knoxville, Tennessee, even
parts of West Virginia, and, you know, in Pennsylvania, so
we're going to see more fire risk.
The other thing is to think about, you know, NIFC reported
that in 2019, just in terms of burned area, total acres burned,
the State with the most wildfires is Alaska. And so Alaska is
some--is a State we need to have on our minds, as wildland fire
scientists, because in the future we will see more Arctic
fires, we will see more boreal fires. Those fire regimes are
accelerating. And, in fact, we will see more of our organic
carbon soils burn, and then burn through the winter, and
reignite in the spring. And that's just a continuation of fire
seasons, and that is a, you know, a very--a different type of
fire management. And I do think the Alaskan Forest Service and
the Alaskan Fire Consortium is a very professional and
outstanding group, and they are trying, through research and
science, to figure out how to work these new challenges in the
future.
Mr. Casten. Wow.
Dr. McCarty. Thank you.
Mr. Casten. So last question, with the little time I've
got left, is really for any of you who feel comfortable
answering this, and it's a little beyond this Committee. Lael
Brainard, who's the--on the Fed Board of Governors in January
said the scientific evidence for climate change is unequivocal,
but the magnitude of climate-related financial risks are highly
uncertain, and among those are wildfires, and she noted that
more than 70 percent of the losses from natural disasters are
uninsured, and warned of the potential to create abrupt
repricing events.
I spent a lot of time on the Financial Services Committee
thinking about how our financial system is at stress from this,
and, of course, we've had some conversations about, you know,
if you were an investor in PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric
Company), you may feel that directly from the wildfire damage.
As you think about where there are big exposures to private
capital from wildfires, any major concerns? And I realize this
is more of a financial question than a scientific question, but
you can't separate the two. They're all linked. Anybody want to
comment on that?
Dr. McCarty. I will just say that maybe perhaps the thing
we should think about is that a lot of Americans, their
capital--much of their money is wrapped up in home ownership,
and property ownership. And in many of our Western States, and
of course in our Eastern States, and Midwestern States, as
they've become more fire prone, then suddenly the likelihood
that you lose your home, or it becomes uninsurable, increases,
and that is just a huge loss to private capital. And you can
only imagine what that would do to our economy, and to our GDP
(gross domestic product), and just health of our population.
And so that is something that's hard to predict and hard to
imagine into the future, but is a direct financial loss.
Mr. Casten. Thank you. I'm out of time, and I yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Gentleman yields back. Mr. Kildee is
recognized.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Madam Chair. I really appreciate
you recognizing me, and I do appreciate the Chair holding this
important hearing. And thanks to the witnesses for your
testimony. I come from Michigan. In fact, the northern part of
my district is home to the Huron Forest, which is 737 plus
acres over 70 miles. It's named after a Native American tribe
that's local to our region, and the forest landscape is highly
prone to seasonal fires. It's dominated by jack pines. Jack
pine needles are highly flammable. Those seasonal fires are
actually part of the life cycle of the forest. Pine cones from
those jack pines containing seeds only open as a result of a
fire. And the Kirtland Warbler, which is a great little
songbird, only breeds in those young jack pines. So, as a
result of logging in the forest, the warbler's habitat was, at
one point, nearly completely destroyed. That little bird was
almost completely extinct.
50 years later, due to prescribed burns, and the
protections put in place by the Endangered Species Act, the
Kirtland Warbler was successfully removed from the endangered
species list. And now each year literally thousands of tourists
come to that part of rural Michigan to see the Kirtland
Warbler. And so it's not just a little bird, it's a really
important part of what makes that place so great, so
interesting, and so attractive to people who come from all over
the country just to see that rare bird.
So in the forest we have to have these prescribed burns to
maintain and control wildfires, but this year, as part of a
prescribed burn, an uncontrolled forest fire broke out and
burned about 5,000 acres of that forestland. Climate change has
contributed to these fires. Due to climate change the forests
are drier, the air is less humid, winds are stronger and more
sustained, and it makes it hard to control these controlled
burns, these prescribed burns. So, thankfully, no people or
structures were damaged, but this is the kind of threat that we
face.
So I'm just curious, and I guess I would ask the panels--
the panelists, perhaps Mr. Geissler and Chief Litzenberg, for
this Huron Forest that I represent, or other forests across the
country that do use prescribed burns to maintain forest health,
as climate change increases the intensity of weather, what do
we need to be doing, what do you suggest we do, so that we can
maintain control of these sorts of fires, and ensure that we
ignore--avoid a controlled burn--prescribed burn like this
getting out of control like the one we saw in the Huron Forest?
So----
Chief Litzenberg. So--yeah.
Mr. Kildee. Go ahead.
Chief Litzenberg. Go ahead.
Mr. Kildee. Go ahead, Mr. Geissler. You want to start, and
then maybe the Chief could comment?
Chief Litzenberg. Sure.
Mr. Geissler. Thank you. And, actually, what I was going
to let you know is that, you know, the idea of--like the jack
pines situation, a lot of that revolves around the potential
need for stand replacement fires even to truly manage that
landscape, which we don't do because of the risk when you have
prescribed burns. And that's why a lot of what you're seeing,
and the type of work that's being done, is on a more cyclical
basis, and maintaining the trees at different stages.
But the one piece that I wanted to make sure that everyone
understood is that when a prescribed burn is planned, a plan is
actually developed, and what it does is it not only is the
objectives of how the burn will be occurring, and what the end
result needs to be, but it's usually very specific on humidity,
wind direction, wind speed, and others. I think that a lot of
it, like you said, is making sure we do good planning, and that
we follow the plan exactly, and then if there are issues, even
if they're minor, learn from those.
In addition to that, a lot of the research that we've
talked about throughout this hearing helps to feed that--those
plans, and the knowledge that we have to develop them. So,
again, I wanted to just kind of bring up how a prescribed burn
can be done, and just the need for additional research and
information to feed those.
Mr. Kildee. Thank you. Chief, you have thoughts on this?
Chief Litzenberg. Yeah. Thank you, Congressman. I'll say
it briefly. So what you just described is the social phenomenon
we call fire adaptation, and it goes have an effect in our
ecologies as well. Back in--hundreds of years ago we decided
we've got to suppress everything, and all of a sudden we had a
bigger issue than we had in the past. And now we're realizing
you have to control these fuels, you have to control risks, and
it's healthier for forests. The more we can get information
about the fuels, and the more we can get information about
weather to use for our planning, the better our planning will
be.
And I'll just say one last thing, which is, luckily, our
organizations have evolved as well, and the science that our
organizations, and the tactics that our organizations are using
to manage these forests, are also getting better. So continuing
to invest in those organizations and our workforces can't be
overstated.
Mr. Kildee. I thank you very much. And, Madam Chair, I
thank you for the extra time. I yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Gentleman yields back. Ms. Wild is
recognized.
Ms. Wild. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate it. And
thank you for this very interesting and informative hearing.
The recent extreme heat in the Pacific Northwest is obviously
concerning for many reasons, not the least of which is the
safety and health of the communities, but it's deeply troubling
that we are seeing such a mix of limited water, dry lands, and
unusually high temperatures this early in the summer. I know
I'm not saying anything that you don't already know. The
terrible fires we saw last summer across Western States, and
the lingering environmental and economic devastation highlight
the importance of our scientific enterprise in informing us of
climate risk and climate related disasters.
The U.S. has a number of Earth-observing satellite-based
platforms that provide useful data for wildland fire science,
but we also rely on assets from European and other
international partners. Dr. McCarty, I'm interested to know, to
what extent are relevant European and international partner
data coordinated with United States data, and how can we
further utilize available international data?
Dr. McCarty. Well, thank you for that question. I will
say, as I'm not at NASA headquarters (HQ), some of this I can't
speak to. I will try to reply back in writing. There are high
level interactions between NASA HQ and, of course, ESA, and
other international space agencies. Our researchers on the
ground, including places like the U.S. Forest Service
Geospatial Technology and Application Center in Salt Lake City
tried to utilize Sentinel products, the Sentinel II, which is
kind of Landsat-like, but higher spatial resolution and higher
temporal resolution. It's overhead every 3 to 5 days, depending
on clouds.
And some of our synthetic aperture radar data, which is at
a 10 meter resolution, from ESA are now being implemented to
try to look at both fire monitoring, fire detection, but also
mapping--better mapping fuels, fuels conditions, including
things like where peatlands are, soil moisture and fuel
moisture condition. And so, in the research community, these
products are being developed, and are being, you know, put
forward to some of our Federal level operational centers. And,
of course, the more that we can do that in our data fusion
process, the better the data is for our agencies and for our
firefighters on the ground.
Ms. Wild. OK. Thank you. And, Chief Litzenberg, can you go
into some more detail about the proposal to develop a standard
warning fire scale similar to the Richter Scale for
earthquakes? I'm particularly interested in how it would be
beneficial for firefighters, but of course the public as well.
Chief Litzenberg. I sure can, Congresswoman. Thanks for
the question. So, much like the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind
Scale, we could develop a scale for forecasting the threat of a
wildland fire. This type of warning system would require
coordination between NOAA, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S.
Department of Interior, and State, tribal, territorial, and
local officials, pretty much everybody across the board. It
would provide a standardized warning system to let communities
and responders know what type of resources might be required,
respond to a fire, what action should be taken, such as
sheltering in place or evacuating. A lot of the catastrophic
issues we've seen during fires are in the movement of people,
and obviously that is, for all of us, the No. 1 value. And the
more we can communicate with people what to expect, the better
our response system will be.
Ms. Wild. Thank you so much, I think there's great promise
there. And, Dr. McCarty, did you want to comment on that at
all? If not, I'll yield my time.
Dr. McCarty. Yes, I think this is a great idea. In fact,
if you compare some of our fire warning systems to some of our
international colleagues, often our fire warning system is seen
as hard to interpret because it kind of looks like a color--a
rainbow speedometer, essentially, and we would need that. And
there's a lot of social science and public health research,
including built environment research, that could be done that
will help implement such a warning system so it does
communicate the right thing to the people on the ground so that
that's not causing problems for our wildland firefighters.
Ms. Wild. Thank you very much. With that, Madam Chair, I
yield back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. Thank you. The gentlelady yields back.
Mr. Perlmutter is recognized.
Mr. Perlmutter. As the last questioner. So I want to
follow up on Ms. Wild's questions. To Dr. McCarty and Chief
Litzenberg, we were talking about satellites, and coordinating
with the Europeans and others, obviously the Canadians. What
steps have been taken--you said that NOAA is a number of years
away from really having satellites to monitor these fires, but
can we monitor them with some of our military assets, our
intelligence assets? And I'm saying we--sometimes in Colorado,
obviously, we had big fires last year, and we had to call in
the National Guard to assist our firefighters. Can we call in
some of our space assets? Have you--either of you heard about
that?
Dr. McCarty. Yes. I mean, the project I know about is
Fireguard. I'd actually like to defer to Dr. Clements because
he has worked with the data. I have not needed to work with
that in my lab, and so I just know about it. Dr. Clements,
would you like to comment on that?
Dr. Clements. Well, thank you. I haven't actually been
able to work with the data, because it's not available for the
research community. I've seen examples of it, and so that's
really all I know. And when we do deploy to wildfires, we know
it's there. We know that the FBANs, or fire behavior analysts,
are getting access to that, at least on some of these big
incidents. So it's available, but I have not been able to work
with those data.
Mr. Perlmutter. Chief Litzenberg, have you had any
experience using some of our other assets besides--that we
might have available through the military or the intelligence
community?
Chief Litzenberg. Congressman, I have not personally had a
lot of experience with that, but I'll add to what Dr. Clements
just said. A lot of what is available, when it is available, is
when large incident management teams are in place. And,
unfortunately, the vast majority of incidents across the
Nation, a large incident management team is not put in place.
It's managed by local responders, whether they're from local
government, or from the State, or from the Forest Service. So
the more that we can get that information that's useable to
all, the better we will be. I have not personally had that
experience.
Mr. Perlmutter. OK. Let me ask this question. So, Dr.
McCarty--or to any of the panelists--last year one of our
fires, called the East Troublesome Fire, which is the second
largest we've had ever, the thing that was most disturbing
about it, it was growing at about four or 5,000 acres a day,
and then in 1 day grew by 120,000 acres. And we lost some
lives, and it was up in a very--it was part of Rocky Mountain
National Park and--near Grand Lake. I mean, how can we use
science to predict when there's going to be an explosion like
that in terms of fighting wildfires?
Dr. McCarty. My quick answer to that is, in addition to
these fire weather models that Dr. Clements has mentioned, we
actually do need better higher resolution--not just fuels
mapping, but fuels conditions, down to the hour. This could be
used by incident command, and then that would tell us where
would we likely see these types of explosive forest fires. And
again, you know, Mr. Geissler has mentioned working with
British Columbia, they had a similar situation in 2017, and
they are--the Canadian Forest Service is working toward a
similar process, so I will defer to the other panelists.
Mr. Perlmutter. Yeah. Mr. Geissler, could you follow up on
that, and kind of explain your experience?
Mr. Geissler. Yeah, actually. As was said, I--there are a
number of monitoring systems that are looking at fuels and
other predictive data in order to give us that heads up. The
Mesonet that Representative Lucas talked about has fuels data
in real time is--as a part of it, so we were able to actually
look at the moisture content and fuel typing at all of these
sites across the State at any given moment. And so what it does
is it allows the fire manager to anticipate.
You know, just this past year we had a wind event which
took us from a slow fire season to our historic fire season in
a matter of a couple of days, and a lot of that really came
down to--we knew that the wind event was going to occur, but
being able, while the wind event was ongoing to have that
ongoing realization of changes, would've been another
assistance. So there are various systems that are in place that
allow this prediction to go, but they just don't have the
coverage to really give a national or a regional picture.
They're highly isolated at this point.
Mr. Perlmutter. OK. Thank you. My time's expired. I yield
back.
Chairwoman Lofgren. The gentleman yields back, and I
believe we have no additional Members available to ask
questions. So, before we bring this hearing to a close, I want
to thank the witnesses for the time they spent with us today,
their expertise, their testimony. It's been enormously helpful
to us as we think about what further steps we should take here
in the Science Committee.
The record will remain open for two weeks for additional
statements from Members, or any additional questions the
Committee may ask of the witnesses. And we do ask, witnesses,
if we have questions, if you could please answer them, if
possible, within that two week period, that we would be
enormously grateful. So at this point the witnesses are excused
with our thanks, and this hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:35 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
Appendix
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