[FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

[Steve Smith]

My father dedicated his life to "forest management" as a professional
forester, trained in biology and range/timber management.   He retired
"early" after 30 years somewhat in disgust over the changing of
aesthetics and perspectives of the United States Forest Service.   He
was dedicated and loyal to the spirit of Aldo Leopold and other early
conservationists.  He spent multiple multi-week segments every summer
leading (most Zuni and Hopi native) fire-crews on the West Coast trying
ot protec homes and "valuable timber". We lived on the edge of the first
Wilderness (Gila) created (at the behest of Aldo Leopold) for 2/3 of my
growing up years.   My father died 10 years ago (Alzheimers), was
cremated, and we (illegall) spread his cremains in the heart of the Gila
with a minor amount of guilt as he was a (nearly) strict rule follower
(yet asked for this).   Within the year, a serious wildfire complex
converged at almost the exact spot we scattered him (woooOoooooo!).  

Even my Trump-voting (2016) sister and husband are now acknowledging
that his life/profession were dedicated to a project that was
fundamentally "unwise".    They *were* (for the most part) doing the
best they knew how.  Most everything they did (from stopping wildfires
at the first opportunity) to running dual bulldozers across landscapes
with a chain between them to clear the juniper trees from a landscape to
allow more grass (for cattle) to grow was "well intended", but it was
*range* and *timber* management not "grassland" and "forest" management
as they called it.  The goal was to maximize the "productivity" of the
public lands under their management (dept of Agriculture_.   The Bureau
of Land Management (BLM dept of Interior) was know to be *worse* in the
sense that their rules on cattle and mining were much less careful of
protecting the landscape and biome.   The National Parks were derided by
both the Forest Service and the BLM for being "much too restrictive" (no
"harvesting of resources"!!!!)

And yet NOW we realize how "unwise" all of that was.   But in the same
breath we suggest that all of our exploitative depradations of the
planet's "resources" are necessary and possibly "a really good
thing"...  and I am sure that in another 20 or 50 years we will be
lamenting *all* of the things that today we are promoting wholeheartedly
in the name of "progress".  

This is part of how I became a neo-Luddite.

- Steve

On 5/25/21 2:50 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> 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
> <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
> <mailto: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
>     <https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/sensors/remote-sensing/drones-sensors-wildfire-detection>
>
>
>     -J.
>
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