This is a pretty cool thing developed by the Federation of American Scientists, Resources for the Future, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. If you click on the link (not the photo above) you can see all the different programs. Lotsa bucks.
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This is a pretty cool thing developed by the Federation of American Scientists, Resources for the Future, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. If you click on the link (not the photo above) you can see all the different programs. Lotsa bucks.
It’d be great to read a sophisticated breakdown of the giant “Suppression & Operations” slice of the pie. It’s not by accident that they didn’t break that down further because the people getting those hundreds of millions don’t want their gravy train to end, which has led to our current crisis in funding for wildland firefighters who need to be paid more!
We need a critical analysis of that section of the funding pie, often referred to as the problematic “Firefighting Industrial Complex” so we know which areas tend to be about pigs feeding at the trough in ways that stifle innovation / monopolize funding, as well as which areas are chronically underfunded and need more funding.
We need more analysis of financial waste and subsequent shortage of firefighters because they aren’t getting a big enough slice of the pie in their paycheck because super expensive air tanker and expensive equipment salesman and similar groups push all the lower cost stuff that needs development off the table.
For example China just broke a world record for a light show with over 3,000 drones, which is a great way to replace fireworks with less fires started during holiday celebrations. And for firefighting, you could use thousands of drones to clear smoke for better visibility for air support, as well as for starting highly precise backfires without risking the lives of firefighters.
Or how about more funding for Steve Wolf’s work using vehicle mounted jet engines to create hurricane force winds:
“The jet engines can be used in several ways. They can clear land of flammables, perform direct attack, direct mists to fire to cool the fuels, physically remove burning limbs from trees using hurricane force winds, and drive backfires in the face of adverse winds. The system is designed to blow anything that’s burning back over the char zone, while simultaneously stripping away fuels in front of the fire by directing the jets downward. Of course this could also be used to penetrate fire swept areas and rescue trapped or injured firefighters.” https://innotechtoday.com/team-wildfire-is-combating-wildfires-with-jet-engines/
I don’t know about the rest, but I think the FS is using drones to set backfires already.. anyone?
I hope so. We used to use helicopters for planned ignitions and they worked great, but cost a lot of money. I have been trying to promote video drones for years as a way for the public to view and document the results of wildfires for the benefit of interested public, environmentalists, and potential log buyers, but get completely ignored. Not sure why — I even made a 13-minute demonstration video to show how easy and useful these tools can be for such purposes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDeE4s1Gj5c
Yep. There are lots of limitations on tech sources and a decent number of limitations on payload, operability and the like. They’re really good for recon and quick remote sensing work, a bit more limited for operations applications. They’re also comically expensive (not that the budget isn’t massive already). https://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/r9/home/?cid=fseprd1127652
Interesting to me:
NFS Hazardous Fuels Reduction = $1.8 billion
NFS Old-Growth Forest Protection = $50 million
For all the talk about needing to thin to protect old growth, it didn’t seem to register here.
(No, the size of these small wedges is not related to the amount of dollars.)
Hi Jon: I have maintained for many years that our old-growth truly do need protection and — if done properly — would likely produce millions in tax revenues, rather than spending them.
I think the figures show that more old-growth have been killed in predictable and largely preventable catastrophic-scale wildfires in the past 35 years than would have been logged, even if old methods had continued to be followed. In any instance, competition from ladder fuels and deadly crown fires resulting from contiguous canopies of younger trees have been destroying our biggest and oldest trees at an alarming rate in recent decades — as clearly predicted and well documented.
An intense and focused effort on locating and managing our remaining oldest trees would likely be very profitable if done in a reasonable manner. Jerry Franklin’s claim that dead-and-dying trees are a sign of a “healthy forest” is completely ass-backwards and largely responsible for much of the mess in our National Forests today, in my consistent opinion.
Dead and dying trees are sure signs of a dead and dying forest and should be treated before they would otherwise predictably burn would be my prescription.