Assessment of Indicators for Coastal Zone Fire Risk

Monitoring burning conditions in eastern North Carolina’s organic soils can be challenging. Existing measures of near-surface dryness, such as drought indices and National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) parameters, have often been considered poor indicators of fire risk in organic soils, which have complex compositions, can burn and smolder several feet underground, and are often found in regions with subtle but meaningful terrain differences. This project sought to further compare these commonly used environmental indices, including several new gridded products, with an experimental Estimated Smoldering Potential dataset in search for better indicators of organic fire risk.