@article {bnh-5008, title = {Evaluation and calibration of a high-resolution soil moisture product for wildfire prediction and management}, journal = { Agricultural and Forest Meteorology}, volume = {264}, year = {2019}, month = {01/2019}, pages = {12}, chapter = {27}, abstract = {

Soil moisture deficit is a key variable used in operational fire prediction and management applications. In Australia, operational fire management practices use simple, empirical water balances models to estimate soil moisture deficit. The Bureau of Meteorology has recently developed a prototype, high-resolution, land surface modelling based, state-of-the-art soil moisture analyses for Australia. The present study examines this new product for use in operational fire prediction and management practices in Australia. The approach used is twofold. First, the new soil moisture product is evaluated against observations from ground based networks. Among the results, the mean Pearson{\textquoteright}s correlation for surface soil moisture across the three in-situ networks is found to be between 0.78 and 0.85. Secondly, the study evaluate a few different calibration methods to facilitate the ready utilization of the new soil moisture product in the current operational fire prediction framework. The calibration approaches investigated here are: minimum-maximum matching, mean-variance matching and, cumulative distribution function matching. Validation of the calibrated products using extended triple collocation technique shows that the minimum-maximum method has the highest skill. Evaluation of the calibrated products against MODIS fire radiative power data highlights that large fires correspond to a drier soil in minimum-maximum outputs compared to other calibration results and the current operational method.

}, keywords = {Calibration, Fire danger rating, Land surface model, Soil moisture deficit, Triple collocation, Verification}, doi = {10.1016/j.agrformet.2018.09.012}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168192318303071}, author = {Vinod Kumar and Imtiaz Dharssi} } @article {bnh-5685, title = {Multi-scaled calibration of high-resolution burnt area and fire severity mapping - workshop report}, number = {483}, year = {2019}, month = {07/2019}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Many remote Indigenous communities in the tropical savannas of northern Australia reply upon {\textquotedblleft}Savanna Burning{\textquotedblright} methods, as payment for ecosystem services, providing employment and supporting their livelihoods. The methods rely upon accurate science to calculate greenhouse gas emissions. The current methods use fire seasonality to discriminate emissions estimates, whereas fire severity, if mapped with adequate accuracy, will provide a greenhouse gas emissions method more appropriate to customary burning, by advantaging low severity fires, that has the added advantage of being of overall benefit to biodiversity.
In November 2018, we brought an international group of remote sensing scientists together to develop a collaborative program to increase the spatial resolution of current burnt area mapping programs and incorporate fire severity within them. This report firstly outlines the requirements for the products and summarises the findings of the workshop.

}, keywords = {Fire, Fire danger rating, fire severity mapping, multi-scale, workshop}, issn = {483}, author = {Andrew C. Edwards} } @conference {bnh-6397, title = {Towards comprehensive characterisation of flammability and fire danger }, booktitle = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC Research Day AFAC19}, year = {2019}, month = {12/2019}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Fire danger ratings inform the community and fire managing agencies of fire risk. Fire danger ratings are currently primarily based on fire danger indices (FDIs) calculated using methods that were developed many decades ago. The challenges and issues with these methods are well documented. We aimed to develop a more objective and observation-based approach to fire danger assessment that considers spatial data on the occurrence of actual fires as well as on fire factors that are already routinely produced every day for Australia. A preliminary assessment suggested a very good potential of the methodology to formally and objectively incorporate any new fire danger predictors. The method can be combined with forecasted rather than observed weather and fuel conditions to produce forward predictions of expected FDI.

}, keywords = {Fire danger rating, fire factors, risk managemnt}, url = {https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/australian-journal-of-emergency-management-monograph-series/}, author = {Albert van Dijk and Marta Yebra and Geoffrey J. Cary and Sami Shah} }