On a beautiful fall day in September, a team of Montana NSF EPSCoR researchers, students and outreach professionals from several Montana colleges and universities gathered at the University of Montana’s Lubrecht Experimental Forest near Greenough, Mont. to view prescribed fire experimental plots while also considering how citizens and communities can contribute to statewide research.
The SMART FIRES team is striving to improve understanding of prescribed fire dynamics and the impact of prescribed fire on Montana’s communities and public lands. Outcomes of the research will enable managers of prescribed fires to develop and refine strategies for deploying prescribed fires effectively to mitigate wildfire risk, a benefit that will extend to local and federal agencies tasked with land management and wildfire mitigation across the West.
In order to broaden the impact of the research to all Montanans, the project’s Education and Outreach team is developing a citizen science network and, ultimately, a statewide project that will involve Montanans in collecting data and observations pertinent to the research questions.
At the annual “All Hands Meeting” on Sept. 17, the team visited several land plots at Lubrecht that had received various control and experimental prescribed burn treatments. There, the outreach team tested several different air quality monitoring and environmental measurement devices while also testing a new geofenced data request through GLOBE Observer, a citizen science app supported by NASA. Through GLOBE Observer, team members collected observations of land cover and tree height as well as clouds, an environmental monitoring protocol that also prompts users to observe sky color and visibility, which could be indications of air quality and smoke.
The SMART FIRES project has just entered Year 2 of its five-year cycle and will continue developing strategies for involving citizens and communities in the impacts of the research.
For more information, visit the Montana Citizen Science Network or email Suzi Taylor: taylor@montana.edu
