[FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

[Pieter Steenekamp]

Let's hope they are a bit more wise in managing the wildfires in the future
than they were in the 20th century.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/14/california-fire-suppression-forests-tinderbox

Before this unprecedented era of mega-blazes on the US west coast,
California’s forests had a canny, ingenious way of avoiding destructive
worst-case forest fire scenarios. By periodically removing the grasses,
shrubs and young trees – known as the forest understory – California
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/california> avoided fires growing to
destructive intensities before the 20th century. The way this was done?
Fire.

Every five to 15 years, groundfires would burn through the forest, killing
off the undergrowth on a regular basis, thus removing the material that can
act as tinder and kindle fires. Such groundfires were sparked by lightning
or by indigenous people who used sophisticated burning practices to
facilitate crop growing and hunting. Because the fires occurred frequently,
the understory rarely had time to build up enough combustible material for
the fires to reach the canopies of the mature trees – which is what causes
the large, devastating fires we are seeing now. As a result, overstory
trees might get wounded by the groundfires, but they would rarely get
killed.

On Tue, 25 May 2021 at 10:22, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:

> Due to climate change there will be more and more wildfires in California,
> Arizona and New Mexico in the coming years. Drones could help to detect
> wildfires early.
>
> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection
>
> -J.
>
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