Over the past month a wildfire in High Park in Northern Colorado burned over 35,000 ha and was defined as a worst-case scenario fire due to the extent, severity, and duration of the fire. This RAPID award will provide funds to document the impact of the High Park fire on the forests, soils and geomorphology of the burned area using NEON's Airborne Observatory (AOP) remotely sensed data (visible-to-shortwave infrared imaging spectrometer, small footprint waveform lidar, and high resolution digital camera) over the area disturbed by the fire and adjacent unburned areas. The remote sensing data acquisition will be coordinated with a targeted field campaign to collect baseline information on forest composition, structure and three-dimensional distribution, soil biota, and rates of erosion and sedimentation. This is an unprecedented opportunity to use this new research tool to quantify an ecological episodic event of this magnitude. Because this is a rapid response proposal, the focus is on essential data collection to characterize post-fire conditions, but data collection efforts are designed in the context of two broad categories of science questions for future research: 1. How did conditions prior to the fire affect fire behavior and impacts? and 2. How does fire severity and pattern affect post-fire trajectories? This RAPID award provides funds to gather data in response to this natural disaster; its urgency derives from the high probability that conditions on the ground will change rapidly after the fire. Summer rains will initiate post-fire erosion and sedimentation; management activities will alter the landscape characteristics, and vegetation will begin to regenerate. The intellectual merit derives from both the science questions but also the ability gather topographic, geomorphic, biological, and chemical information on unprecedented scales (cm to km) with the AOP. Combining the field and remote sensing datasets will allow an unprecedented assessment of the impact of the fire, provide data products useful to the scientific and management communities, and support future research on post-fire trajectories. Findings from this research will be of significant interest to multiple stakeholders in the region, including the US and State Forest Service and the Cities of Fort Collins and Greeley, who both have water supplies that will be affected by post-fire erosion. A workshop will be held to coordinate research results with stakeholders and transfer data products and knowledge gained in addressing complex feedbacks between drought, fire, and water supply.
The objective for this project was to respond rapidly to the High Park fire and obtain a remote sensing dataset of post-fire conditions immediately after the fire occurrence and before any substantial landscape changes such as erosion or sedimentation occurred as a result of summer thunderstorms and to establish a baseline on post-fire landscape conditions for multi-year analysis. The High Park fire took place in June-July 2012 and burned over 35,000 ha of public and private lands located west and north of Fort Collins, CO. At the time, it was the second largest wildfire in Colorado history. More than 250 structures were destroyed and one fatality was reported. The fire was managed by a Type 1 incident command structure with over 1,800 fire-fighting personnel deployed. Fighting the fire cost over $31.5 million. The High Park fire was a unique opportunity to test out and demonstrate NEON’s rapid response capability to a major ecological disturbance event. The High Park fire occurred in relatively close proximity to NEON Headquarters in Boulder, CO, which facilitated rapid deployment of the AOP and strong collaboration between NEON and the research community at Colorado State University. Aerial remote sensing was critical for this response, since collection of multiple post-fire response variables over such a wide area using only field data would be time consuming and prohibitively expensive. Fortunately many aspects of forest composition and structure and post-fire conditions are strongly linked to information that can be captured using remote sensing (e.g. burn severity, presence and intensity of beetle damage, tree species composition, woody biomass, terrain elevation). NEON flew the first of its Airborne Observation Platform (AOP) remote sensing platforms in this campaign with a goal of surveying the entire High Park burn scar. The NEON AOP is an integrated airborne system developed specifically for monitoring terrestrial ecosystems. It incorporates a high-fidelity visible-to-shortwave infrared (VSWIR) imaging spectrometer operating from 380 to 2500 nm, a small footprint waveform lidar, and a high resolution digital camera. For this campaign, the NEON Imaging Spectrometer Design Verification Unit (NISDVU) was flown. The airborne lidar provides a high resolution digital elevation model of the post-burn topography to better than 25 cm accuracy in both horizontal and vertical directions as well as mapping the three-dimensional distribution of burned and unburned vegetation. Images collected by the imaging spectrometer can used to produce maps of the remaining beetle-infested and beetle-kill areas, tree species composition, invasive species presence, and initial maps of burn severity. Flight operations began on August 21, 2012 and a total of 21 lines and one cross strip were flown. These were located in the eastern Ponderosa pine portion of the burn scar. Mean flight altitudes ranged between 10,600 ft. and 11,700 ft. altitude above Mean Sea Level (MSL). On August 22, 2012, a total of 20 flight lines and one cross strip were flown. These were located in the western, Lodgepole pine, dominated region. Mean flight altitudes ranged from 12,900 to 14,500 feet MSL. Conditions were cloudy in the region and at least some flight lines suffer from cloud contamination that affects the quality of the spectrometer data. The balance of the burn scar area was scheduled to be flown on August 23, 2012. Unfortunately, the aircraft was grounded due to weather for a number of days as major storms moved into the Colorado Front Range that resulted in extensive cloudiness and rain over the survey area. Due to time limitations on aircraft availability, the survey of the remaining burn scar area had to be aborted, so the project was completed with approximately 2/3rds of the total area surveyed. The remainder of the burn scar has been surveyed on a follow-on grant. The remote sensing data sets from this project will be freely shared with the scientific community under the terms of the NEON data sharing policy and are being made available on the NEON website (www.neoninc.org/). Data and findings from this study are of significant interest to many stakeholders in the region, including the US and State Forest Service, Larimer County, and the Cities of Fort Collins and Greeley, both of whom have water supply systems likely to be affected by post-fire erosion.
