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Battle against wildfires gets high-tech weapon – LANDFIRE a $40 million effort by six federal to figure agencies out the fire risk for every inch of the country and map was developed in Montana

Charting vegetation with satellite-based system will help firefighters determine area’s risk

When the call comes — and it will come — sometime in the next few years of a wildfire spreading through tinder-dry chaparral east and south of the Bay Area, a battalion chief likely will linger before a computer before committing crews to the inferno.

That computer will show with pinpoint accuracy what vegetation and fuel loads the Hotshots and hand crews will find at the fire. And if it’s right, the chief can thank a bunch of volunteers who were out here last week filling in some gaps for the satellite-based system.

It’s called LANDFIRE — a $40 million effort by six federal agencies to figure out the fire risk for every inch of the country and map it. California and the West should be mapped by 2006, the rest of the country by 2009.

The program’s primary goal is to give public land managers a uniform way to assess their land’s fire potential and figure out how to manage it. The ability to zero in on a particular gully during a fireand tell what fuels are there is more of a side benefit, said Bruce Jeske, LANDFIRE’s Montana-based project manager.

But it’s an important one, he said.

"The Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the (National) Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Fish and Wildlife Service are all spending money to treat hazardous fuels," Jeske said. "There’s no way to compare their efforts."

By Douglas Fischer, STAFF WRITER

Full Story: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/ci_2737530

About LANDFIRE:

LANDFIRE’s Principle Investigators are located at the USDA FS Rocky Mountain Research Station Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana (www.firelab.org) and the DOI USGS National Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (http://edc.usgs.gov).

http://www.landfire.gov/ABOUT_PartnersCooperators.html

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