Could the U.S. fight forest fires with software?

For years, the Forest Service has struggled to keep up with a backlog of thinning and prescriptive burn projects that would reduce the chances of large, highly destructive and dangerous fires across the increasingly arid West, where climate change is only exacerbating the problem. A big part of the problem is financial. Forest Service chief Tom Tidwell says fire suppression claimsnearly half of the agency’s yearly budget. Each year, however, more resources are dedicated to fighting fires, and fewer are put toward preventing them. It feels like a losing battle. But a pilot project made possible by a collaboration between TNC, the Forest Service’s Technology and Development arm and two Arizona timber companies is testing whether technology can help turn this tide. “The largest contiguous Ponderosa Pine forest in the world extends from northern Arizona to central New Mexico, and we’ve lost a quarter of that, a million acres, to fire in the past decade,” says Pat Graham, Arizona state director for TNC. “We’re looking for a solution that can scale to the size of the problem. We’re no longer able to use small ideas.” Currently, Forest Service employees hike through these pine forests and manually mark trees that should remain, so logging companies know which they can take. The goal is to remove small-diameter trees and allow space between larger pines. With the TimberGuide software, which runs on a tablet computer mounted inside a wood harvester, a prescriptive thinning plan can be uploaded and used to guide harvester operators through the cutting process without anyone having to manually mark trees. This translates into more thinned forests, less labor and likely more profits for timber companies...more