Tag: fire

Environmental Sensing Is Here, Tracking Everything from Forest Fires to Threatened Species

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You are in a lush forest. Sunlight filters through the bright green canopy, casting dappled shadows on the ground. Towering trees rise over delicate ferns, wildflowers, and colorful mushrooms. A deer slinks behind a shrub. But there are subtle signs of human intervention: small electronic devices gathering vital data on potential threats such as drought or pests and transmitting them miles away.

Although technology has long been used to study animals and plants in forests, it’s evolving rapidly—becoming smaller, smarter, and more interconnected. Some devices are so small they can be placed on a single leaf. “For developers of such devices, the forest presents a completely new challenge,” says Ulrike Wallrabe, a professor of microsystem technology. Here, tech must withstand ever-changing conditions, from fluctuating temperatures to rain and snowfall, and even curious creatures, such as mice.

Once up and running, the new generation of smart devices will offer unprecedented insights into the forest. “Drones already monitor large areas of forest, but they cannot explain why one tree is thriving and another is struggling,” says Wallrabe. “We need to understand what’s happening on a small scale and over time.”

Wallrabe and her fellow researchers are working on a range of devices that will be deployed from the ground to the treetops, transmitting data from Germany’s Black Forest to their labs at the University of Freiburg. At the same time, scientists and engineers at other companies are also focused on making their devices unobtrusive and, ultimately, self-sustaining.

Silvanet Wildfire Sensor

Time is of the essence when fighting forest fires. Sensors attached to trunks “smell” tell-tale gases like hydrogen and carbon monoxide, and alert firefighters within the first hour—before satellites or cameras can spot open flames. German startup Dryad Networks has built AI into its solar-powered sensors to ensure that they can distinguish between real fires and, say, passing diesel trucks.

Treevia

Digital dendrometers relieve foresters of tedious work. As trees grow, the elastic band wrapped around their trunk stretches and transmits data directly to a computer. The lightweight device from Brazilian startup Treevia can even be attached to saplings. It also contains a humidity and heat sensor, providing insights into climatic impacts on reforested areas.

The Guardian

What does it take to catch illegal loggers or poachers? A smartphone is a good start. Rainforest Connection’s recycled, solar-powered smartphone listens for the sound of chain saws or gunshots within a 1-mile radius. The recordings are transmitted to the cloud for analysis and alert local authorities in near real time. This device also provides insights into the distribution and calling behavior of animals.

BiodivX Drone

As animals move through trees, they shed DNA through feces, skin, and hair. This innovative drone collects what is known as environmental DNA (eDNA) from leaves and branches—with particles sticking to its adhesive strips. Scientists from Switzerland programmed the drone so it can navigate autonomously through dense forests and hover steadily around branches to take samples.

Leaf Sensor

Wallrabe and her team at the University of Freiburg have developed a glass capsule that measures gas exchange between a leaf and its surroundings. It can detect specific chemicals that trees emit under stress, for example, in the event of a drought, infestation, or disease. The capsule is transparent so that sunlight can reach the leaf without impairing its function.

Plant-e

When sunlight is limited, most devices are powered by batteries. Plant-e, a Dutch company spun out of Wageningen University, makes use of a natural process: Plants produce organic material through photosynthesis; some they use for growth, the rest ends up into the soil. Bacteria break down this material and release electrons that Plant-e uses to power its sensors.

Seed-dropping drones

To scale up and accelerate tree planting efforts, several companies, including UK-based Dendra Systems, have developed cutting-edge drones. These drones, loaded with an array of seeds, hover over target areas and release their precious cargo. This is particularly helpful in remote areas that are difficult for humans to access. By recording the exact location of drop sites, foresters can monitor growth and health of the newly planted trees.

This article appears in the January/February 2025 issue of WIRED UK magazine.

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December 6, 2024
Zombie Fire Season Is Here in the Arctic

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We call this new state the hot metastable state of peat soils. In this context, “metastable” means a long burn—the hot state lasts for a long but finite time, up to 10 years, until the peat burns out.

Our other key finding is that a sudden transition from the regular cold state to the hot metastable state can be triggered by realistic climate patterns alone, including summer heat waves and global warming scenarios. Most interestingly, the increase in the atmospheric temperature has to be faster than some critical rate to trigger the transition. If the atmospheric temperature increases by the same amount but at a slower rate, bioactive peat soil remains in the regular cold state and never transitions to the hot metastable state.

We still do not have proof of this happening in the real world, and it hasn’t been demonstrated in a lab—for now, this is a phenomenon seen only in our models. But we do know that compost (very similar to peat) can catch fire in the same way. For instance a large fire on the outskirts of London during a heatwave in 2022 was probably caused by a pile of compost spontaneously combusting.

All this suggests that atmospheric temperature is not actually the key critical factor for zombie fires. Rather, it is the rate of atmospheric warming that triggers long burns of underground peat. Put simply, it is not the heat, it is the rate.

How to Fight the Zombies

As the climate warms, the weather is becoming more extreme, and these are precisely the conditions that can lead to more and more zombie fires. This is concerning, as it could kick off a vicious cycle: The gigatons of carbon released from ancient peat soils into the atmosphere are likely to make the climatic changes even worse, which means more fires, so more extreme weather, and so on.

Indeed, zombie fires are an example of a rate-induced tipping point, where a system fails to adapt to too-fast changes in external conditions and transitions from its regular state to a different, often undesired state. It is possible that the contemporary climate is approaching—or has already exceeded—dangerous rates of change for certain natural system, such as bioactive peat soils, which could explain the recent increase in zombie fires.

It appears that the only solution to prevent further zombie fires is to limit climate variability. While policymakers focus on dangerous levels of atmospheric temperature (the heat), climate variability (the rate of change) could be equally or even more relevant to our resilience in the short term.

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June 1, 2024
Somehow This $10,000 Flame-Thrower Robot Dog Is Completely Legal in 48 States

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If you’ve been wondering when you’ll be able to order the flame-throwing robot that Ohio-based Throwflame first announced last summer, that day has finally arrived. The Thermonator, what Throwflame bills as “the first-ever flamethrower-wielding robot dog” is now available for purchase. The price? $9,420.

Thermonator is a quadruped robot with an ARC flamethrower mounted to its back, fueled by gasoline or napalm. It features a one-hour battery, a 30-foot flame-throwing range, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity for remote control through a smartphone.

It also includes a Lidar sensor for mapping and obstacle avoidance, laser sighting, and first-person-view navigation through an onboard camera. The product appears to integrate a version of the Unitree Go2 robot quadruped that retails alone for $1,600 in its base configuration.

Photograph: Xmatter

The company lists possible applications of the new robot as “wildfire control and prevention,” “agricultural management,” “ecological conservation,” “snow and ice removal,” and “entertainment and SFX.” But most of all, it sets things on fire in a variety of real-world scenarios.

Back in 2018, Elon Musk made the news for offering an official Boring Company flamethrower that reportedly sold 10,000 units in 48 hours. It sparked some controversy, because flamethrowers can also double as weapons or potentially start wildfires.

Flamethrowers are not specifically regulated in 48 US states, although general product liability and criminal laws may still apply to their use and sale. They are not considered firearms by federal agencies. Specific restrictions exist in Maryland, where flamethrowers require a Federal Firearms License to own, and California, where the range of flamethrowers cannot exceed 10 feet.

Photograph: Xmatter

Even so, to state the obvious, flamethrowers can easily burn both things and people, starting fires and wreaking havoc if not used safely. Accordingly, the Thermonator might be one Christmas present you should skip for little Johnny this year.

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.

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April 24, 2024
Indigenous Australians have managed land with fire for 11,000 years

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Aboriginal people use fires to manage the landscape

Penny Tweedie/Getty Images

Indigenous Australians have been managing the environment with fire for at least 11,000 years, according to an analysis of sediment cores retrieved from an ancient lake.

Michael Bird at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, says the findings suggest that a return to an Indigenous regime of more frequent but less intense fires could reduce the risk of catastrophic bushfires and improve environmental management.

It has long been known that Australia’s first peoples, who are thought to have been on the continent for 65,000 years, carefully managed the landscape with fire to make it easier to move around and hunt prey. They also figured out that this benefited some animals and plants that they preferred and reduced the risk of more dangerous fires.

However, it has been difficult to establish how long this has been happening for, says Bird. That is because most waterways completely dry out in the dry season each year and the carbon in their sediments is destroyed.

Girraween Lagoon, near Darwin in the Northern Territory, is a massive sinkhole covering an area of about 1 hectare that has stayed permanently wet for at least 150,000 years. As the climate changed over millennia, so, too, did the vegetation around the sinkhole. “From Girraween Lagoon, we have got 150,000 years’ worth of sediment that has never dried out,” says Bird.

By analysing sediment cores from the lagoon’s bed, Bird and his colleagues were able to study three key metrics: the accumulation of micro-charcoal particles, the proportion of burnt material in the charred vegetation matter and a measure of the amount of the different kinds of carbon that remain after burning.

The first two metrics allow researchers to infer the intensity of fires, while the third indicates whether fires were cool enough to leave traces of grasses preserved.

Prior to the arrival of people, natural fires in the savannahs of northern Australia were ignited by lightning late in the dry season, when vegetation and the landscape had almost fully dried out. This kind of higher-intensity fire combusts biomass more completely, particularly fine fuels such as grass and litter, leaving less charred remains from grasses.

Indigenous fire regimes, on the other hand, burn frequently but with much less heat, affect small areas and are limited to the ground layer, promoting a mosaic of vegetation and helping to protect biodiversity.

Bird says the more recent layers in the cores show clear evidence of more frequent fires and grasses that haven’t been fully combusted, indicating cooler fires. These kinds of fires are a sharp departure from the previous natural pattern of fires and provide the tell-tale fingerprint of Indigenous fire management, he says.

Researchers collect sediment cores at Girraween Lagoon in Northern Territory, Australia

Michael Bird

This signal can be seen in sediments dating back to at least 11,000 years ago, the study found, but before that point the metric for the proportion of grasses and tree remains becomes harder to study. Bird says there are hints of a human burning signal from as early as 40,000 years ago, but the evidence isn’t as clear-cut.

“It means that for at least 11,000 years, the savannah has grown up with humans,” he says. “The biodiversity has grown up with that fire regime. Take that kind of burning away and you start to see significant problems with biodiversity.”

David Bowman at the University of Tasmania, Australia, says the paper highlights the twin importance of climate and humans in shaping fire regimes.

“Separating climate from anthropogenic – and importantly Indigenous – fire management is a hugely important topic,” he says. “We are battling to counteract climate-driven wildfires globally and such a deep-time perspective will be an invaluable addition to current research and development of sustainable fire management.”

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March 11, 2024
Rampant Wildfires Are Threatening a Collapse of the Amazon Rainforest

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“Degradation means that you still have standing forest, but you are losing some of the structure, some of the functioning,” says Armenteras Pascual. “You might even look and think it’s really a beautiful forest, but it’s not so healthy.”

Being degraded also makes a forest more prone to wildfire. And once a part of the Amazon burns, it’s more likely to catch fire again. “When a forest burns, trees die, releasing organic matter above the soil and opening the canopy,” says Flores. “Hence, more fuel is available and more sunlight and wind can desiccate this fuel, causing the ecosystem to become more flammable. The consequence is that burnt forests are much more likely to burn again.”

When considering the impacts of human disturbance and extreme drought over recent decades, as much as 38 percent of what remains of the Amazon Rainforest may already be degraded, Flores and his colleagues found.

By considering all of the factors contributing to the degradation of the Amazon—climate change, drought, deforestation, wildfires—the team also developed models projecting heat, degradation, and fire trends into the future. The findings are gloomy. By 2050, their models show, temperatures over the Amazon Basin are expected to be 2 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today, depending on greenhouse gas emissions over the next two and a half decades. By 2050, the Amazon’s dry season may be a month longer than it is now. Wildfires are expected to increase in frequency and severity.

As a result, they estimate nearly half the Amazon may reach a “tipping point” by 2050, when it will cease being a forest at all and transition into savannah and grassland.

The impacts of this would be devastating on local and global levels. A 2021 report from the Science Panel for the Amazon found that 10,000 of the rainforest’s plant and animal species are at risk of extinction due to climate change and habitat destruction. A widespread collapse like this may well push these species over the edge. Many of the Amazon’s 40 million human inhabitants may be displaced by unbearable heat, and Indigenous peoples in particular would lose their livelihoods, ways of life, and knowledge systems.

As alarmist as this might sound, Armenteras Pascual thinks the warnings of Flores and his colleagues are, if anything, understated. “It’s not like half of the Amazon will collapse and the other half will go on just fine,” she says. “The whole system might collapse—the whole system in terms of hydrology, which is probably the most important role of the Amazon globally, its role in cooling the climate.”

If the Amazon were to undergo a “large-scale collapse” by 2050, as Flores and his colleagues warn, it may emit as much as 120 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, currently equivalent to about 3.5 years of global CO₂ emissions. Global temperatures may rise 0.3 degrees Celsius as a result.

For now, the unusually high number of fires are expected to continue burning through the month of April, when the rainy season begins. “It’s fire season,” Armenteras Pascual, who is working with the Colombian government to monitor emissions from fires in the Northern Amazon, says. “Just this past week we had 7,000 hectares burning that no one is talking about, in one of the nature preserves that we have near the border with Venezuela.”

“There are some fires here in Colombia as well,” she adds. Data from the satellites shows that just over 1,000 fires burned in the Colombian Amazon in the first week of March. “Fires are burning,” Armenteras Pascual says, “and they’re picking up.”

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March 11, 2024