The ability to prepare for prescribed fires just got a whole lot easier with a suite of updates to the Tall Timbers Prescribed Burn Planner.
To safely apply this vital ecosystem tool, burn practitioners must first know what detailed parameters are best suited for each burn unit to achieve their goals while also being a good neighbor to others in the area and maintaining air quality.
The Burn Planner can help fire practitioners set their ideal weather, wind and other conditions for specified burn units and receive regular notifications when those conditions are forecast for their area.
But now, smoke modeling, current weather conditions and the ability to attach specific polygons to burn units have been included by the Tall Timbers Geospatial Lab and Smoke Science Program with the help of a grant from the U.S. Forest Service and assistance from the Timmons Group.
Think of it as a one-stop shop for planning out fires with the added bonus of being notified whenever conditions are right to get out the driptorch, said Tall Timbers Smoke Science Program Director Holly Nowell.
“I haven’t seen anything where everything is in one place like this,” Nowell said. “So, it’s great for private landowners.”
The weather and smoke screenings are not intended to replace the requirements for obtaining and maintaining burn permit records but are a great planning tool.
The Burn Planner also allows landowners to save data on completed burns to use during post-fire assessments, which can help determine whether objectives were met and how techniques or conditions could be changed for better future results.
Karen Cummins, Tall Timbers Geospatial Program director, said that tool is a key to adaptive management.
“It’s a nice tool for private landowners to capture what they actually did and be able to go back, see the weather from that day and tweak what they did,” she said.
The relaunched Prescribed Burn Planner integrated with the National Association of State Foresters (NASF) National Fuels Treatment Tracking (NFT) databases and incorporated input from users about desired functionality. User-based changes will continue, Cummins said.
“Everybody has ideas they want to include,” she said. “We already have a list of high priority items we’re working on for the next round.”
Want to create an account on the Burn Planner? Follow this link
The Southern Fire Exchange is hosting a webinar to demonstrate the capabilities of the Prescribed Burn Planner on April 28. Mark your calendars to join in
