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Welcome to EMBER's Website!The members of EMBER hope that this site will be an informative for those managing wildland fire landscapes. EMBER's MissionEMBER is a consortium of interagency Federal principal investigators working on the Enterprise for Monitoring Burn Effects Remotely. IntroductionHistorically fire has been among the dominant disturbances in the western United States. Following large wildland fires, land managers require information on the postfire state of the land surface to plan hazard mitigation strategies and to guide revegetation efforts. This website reports on the use of remotely sensed data as one source of post-wildfire information for land managers. Two study areas were investigated - one at Catnip Mountain on the Sheldon Refuge in NW Nevada that burned in May of 1996 by prescribed fire that turned into a wildfire, and the other is a portion of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rangeland in central Wyoming, referred to as the Left Hand Creek study site, which has been subject to prescribed fires in 1996 and 1997 and wildfires in 2000 and 2001. Hyperspectral Mapping (HyMap) imaging spectrometer data over the Left Hand Creek study area were collected on July 2, 2002. In addition to the remote sensing data collection, field measurements of vegetation reflectance and surveys of plant species composition were made for 33 sites within the study area. Probe-1 imaging spectrometer data was gathered over Catnip Mountain study area in July 2003. Forty-seven vegetation plots were measured for vegetation reflectance and surveyed for plant species composition. Measurements of vegetation cover and species composition were made to assess the post-fire temporal dynamics of vegetation community composition in this grassland-sagebrush ecosystem. The HyMap and Probe-1 data will be used to estimate the species composition and moisture content of the vegetation canopy, which may in turn be used to develop input information for fire behavior and fire danger rating models. Ongoing efforts in the Catnip Mountain and Left Hand Creek study areas seek to utilize postfire characterization of the land surface with in situ studies of erosion and vegetation re-growth to develop predictive models of landscape response following wildland fires. Study ResultsFor study results, please click on the links below or on the buttons bar at the top of each page.
Contact Information for Principal Investigators:
Principal Investigator Ralph Root:In memory of Ralph Root, our project’s Principal Investigator who passed away in January of 2004. He was a personable, principled leader, a true friend, and an inspirational man. Dr. Ralph R. Root served the public in a distinguished 30 year career with the National Park Service, National Biological Service and the US Geological Survey, during which he applied and fostered the use of remote sensing to further the conservation and sound management of natural resources. This project would have not been possible if it were not for Ralph. |
Send mail to
s1goodma@blm.gov with
questions or comments regarding this web site.
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