Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Pyrogeography: Mapping and Understanding
the Spatial Patterns of Wildfire
Michael J. Medler
Abstract Wildland fires are a significant and growing problem for many communi-
ties. Simultaneously, fire is increasingly seen as an important component of natural
ecosystems. As human development continues to encroach on wildland areas we
will see more conflicts between allowing fire in ecosystems and human develop-
ment. Geotechnologies such as remote sensing, GIS, and Dendrochronology are
increasingly important in improving our understanding of the complex processes
involved and the complicated social issues that accompany human interaction with
wildland fire. Pyrogeography is an emerging approach that brings together many
disciplines and techniques to help elucidate the spatial and temporal patterns that
can help us better understand wildland fire. This chapter explores the key concepts
necessary to understand current spatial research in fire ecology, spatial computer fire
models, and some of the spatial data sets that are used in wildland fire research in
the United States.
Keywords Pyrogeography
·
Wildland Fire
·
Fire Modeling
·
LANDFIRE
·
FARSITE
3.1 Introduction
Large forest fires might seem simple to map using modern geotechnology. Satellites
or aircraft can provide good post-fire imagery and all that might seem necessary is
to use standard geographic information systems (GIS) to draw polygons around all
the newly blackened regions. In fact almost every fire season we see these sorts
of simple maps in the news. It is even a common introductory GIS class exer-
cise to produce simple burn perimeter maps from air photos. However, wildland
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