- Conduct Wildfire Simulations
- Open Source Materials
- Pilot Upper-Air Profiler
- Climate Change
- Climate Change Projection Application
- Open Source Materials
With increasingly severe fire seasons, a new laboratory will allow experiments on extreme wildfire behaviors that cannot be studied anywhere else in the world, crucial to understanding both wildland fire and its mitigation before it’s too late
Although the use of the facilities is increasing by R&D as well as NTDP, effective use for mandated experimental activities is declining because:
The Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana, includes a Burn Chamber and High- and Low-Speed Wind Tunnels, all built in 1960 during the original Fire Lab construction. The large burn chamber is a 40 x 40-foot area with a 60-foot-high ceiling. It supports diverse fire science topics, including fire behavior research, research on physical processes of fire, smoke and emissions research, mandatory fire-retardant testing, and K-12 educational programs.
No experimental facilities outside of Missoula are currently dedicated to wildland fire. Facilities designed for structure fires are remote from the western wildfire expertise, making logistics of scheduling, staffing, and transporting materials difficult and prohibitively expensive. Short-term funding in fire mitigation tends to be directed toward buildings, industry, and detection technology, whereas long-term research is required to deal with large-scale wildfire problems.
No experimental facilities outside of Missoula are currently dedicated to wildland fire. Facilities designed for structure fires are remote from the western wildfire expertise, making logistics of scheduling, staffing, and transporting materials difficult and prohibitively expensive. Short-term funding in fire mitigation tends to be directed toward buildings, industry, and detection technology, whereas long-term research is required to deal with large-scale wildfire problems.