Wildland Fire
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Wildland fire is both a scourge and a necessity.  Under certain conditions, wildfire has tremendous destructive potential, posing considerable risk to life and property.  However, fire is also an environmental necessity because many natural ecosystems have evolved over millennia to incorporate it as a means of regeneration, to control invading pest species, and to keep fuel accumulation in check thereby reducing the potential for stand-replacing conflagrations. 
Restoring fire’s role in forest ecosystems requires increased use of prescribed burning, which carries its own issues such as minimizing chances of fire escape and effective smoke management.  Both fire suppression and prescribed burn management will benefit from any improvements in the ability to predict fire and smoke behavior.

Meteorology is one factor that ranks above all others in driving fire and smoke dispersion behavior.  The qualities of upper-air stability, winds and humidity are critically important to determining short-term fire behavior, e.g. from morning to afternoon.  Especially in complex terrain, atmospheric stability, wind and humidity fields can vary significantly over short distances (e.g. few km), a fact that renders traditional sources of upper-air information wanting.  Access to representative upper-air data improves the quality of fire weather prediction for both suppression and prescribed fire operations.

The AIMMS-20 allows aircraft, fixed-wing or helicopter, commonly engaged in fire operations to provide observations of winds aloft, turbulence, temperature and humidity, thereby offering a critically important new source of timely and local upper-air data.  Using the AIMMS-20 SatCom option, aircraft position and meteorological observations can be relayed by the Internet for access by on-site incident meteorologists or regional weather forecast offices.