Boots on the Ground and Eyes in the Sky: A Perspective on Estimating Fire Danger from Soil Moisture Content

Abstract

With increasing forest and grassland wildfire trends strongly correlated to anthropogenic climate change, assessing wildfire danger is vital to reduce catastrophic human, economic, and environmental loss. From this viewpoint, the authors discuss various approaches deployed to evaluate wildfire danger, from in-situ observations to satellite-based fire prediction systems. Lately, the merit of soil moisture in predicting fuel moisture content and the likelihood of wildfire occurrence has been widely realized. Harmonized soil moisture measurement initiatives via state-of-the-art soil moisture networks have facilitated the use of soil moisture information in developing innovative applications for wildfire prediction and risk management applications. Additionally, the increasing availability of remote-sensing data has enabled the monitoring and modeling of wildfires across various terrestrial ecosystems. When coupled with remotely sensed data, field-based soil moisture measurements have been more valuable predictors of assessing wildfire than alone. However, sensors capable of acquiring higher spectral information and radiometry across large spatiotemporal domains are still lacking. The automation aspect of such extensive data from remote-sensing and field data is needed to rapidly assess wildfire and mitigation of wildfire-related damage at operational scales.

Remotely sensed dry matter productivity and soil moisture content as potential predictors of arid rangeland wildfires: A case study of Kgalagadi District, Botswana

“…The availability of large quantities of dry matter produced during the rainy season and low SM seems to be a good recipe for wildfire ignition in the study area. The use of SM content in wildfire prediction has been suggested by several studies [63][64][65]. Results from this study agree with earlier studies that indicate the use of SM in wildfire prediction, with soil moisture having the highest (15,745.69) MDG of all parameters (Table 5).…”

“…The increasing availability of remotely sensed soil moisture data increased the possibility of using soil moisture as a wildfire danger prediction variable. However, there is a lack of remote sensors capable of capturing soil moisture data across large spatiotemporal domains [64]. Improving the availability of higher-resolution soil moisture data could help improve the prediction accuracy of wildfire danger.…”

Regional switchgrass carbon sequestration estimates from high‐frequency eddy covariance and Mesonet observations

“…Because the coarse spatial resolution of the satellite‐derived measurements has been identified as a source of error, coupling Landsat TM and Landsat ETM+ with flux tower measurements using an image fusion approach (combining two or more images of different spatiotemporal scales to form a new image using certain algorithms) and regression tree approach was found to be effective for regional NEE estimations (Fu et al., 2014). With improvements in high‐resolution satellite sensors, shorter satellite revisit times, high‐frequency weather data, and advanced data processing and machine learning algorithms, the remote sensing approach can be more appealing in regions with limited in situ observation networks (Glenn et al., 2008; Sharma & Dhakal, 2021).…”

Land and Atmosphere Precursors to Fuel Loading, Wildfire Ignition and Post‐Fire Recovery

“…Land surface‐atmosphere coupling and soil moisture (SM) significantly influence wildfire regimes (Seneviratne et al., 2006; Thomas Ambadan et al., 2020; Zhuang et al., 2021). Soil moisture serves as an indicator of the moisture content of available fuel, including duff layers (Jia et al., 2019; Qi et al., 2012; Rakhmatulina et al., 2021; Sharma et al., 2020), which is a crucial factor in identifying high‐risk areas for potential wildfire occurrences (Chaparro et al., 2017; Krueger et al., 2022; Sharma & Dhakal, 2021). The western US has also shown a strong correlation between the timing of snowmelt, soil moisture, and wildfire activity (Westerling et al., 2006).…”