RIT physicist Bob Kremens igniting and monitoring a prescribed fire in the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky in 2008. PHOTO COURTESY BOB KREMENS/RIT
Small fires play an essential role in the natural health of forests by ridding the forest floor of debris, and opening upper canopies so more sunlight reaches the ground. But large forest fires, particularly in the West and Southwestern US, claim lives and cost billions of dollars in damage annually.
"As more people move into these forested areas, it will continue to be a serious problem," says RIT physicist Bob Kremens.
Kremens and engineer Jason Faulring are fire researchers at the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The men have chased fires, in a manner of speaking, throughout the country. Both are firefighters and regularly study or "read" prescribed fires, which are generally small fires ignited by trained experts to clear grounds of dead wood and brush.
While Kremens uses thermal infrared sensors on the ground, Faulring, who is also a pilot, uses a multi-spectral camera from a small aircraft to record the fire's intensity and movement. The special camera, referred to as a Wildfire Airborne Sensor Program or WASP, was built at RIT for this unique type of work.
While circling above, Faulring says, WASP photographs the fire in four-minute intervals. The photographs form a layered image that can be used to help firefighters on the ground know how to safely suppress the blaze.
Last month, Kremens and Faulring participated in the 2011 Prescribed Fire Combustion and Atmospheric Research Experiment in the pine forest at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. More than 100 scientists attended the prescribed burns, and RIT designed and built more than half of the ground instruments used in the fire research.
