Data loggers track wildfire behavior Jeff Kennedy, a doctoral candidate in ecology at UC Davis, began tracking topography, soil regulation of regional climate and native vegetation for water energy balance.
With the help of seven HOBO Pro temperature and humidity data loggers U23-001 , U23-002, U23-003, and U23-004 lined up vertically over a mile of mountainous rugged Big Sur coast in central California, Jeff brought his research to a climax.
On September 21, 1999, unfortunately, a wildfire drastically changed his future research. The fire, burning for more than a month, occupied six or seven Recorders U23-001 , U23-002, U23-003, and U23-004. Jeff was unable to obtain Forest Service permission to revisit his site until October 20th, at which point his retrieval of U23-001 , U23-002, U23-003, and U23-004 survived.
To his amazement, the red LED light was still blinking, even after the data logger was wrapped in melted radiation shielding! *Jeff was able to recover from the three surviving U23-001, U23-002, U23-003 , U23-004 Download a complete data log since last download on September 10th. Although the data vary due to temperature and humidity fluctuations from the fire, on the ground for a month, and then at home in the basement, the data values appear to be valid for the environment.
"The importance of the data from the HOBOPro data loggers U23-001, U23-002, U23-003, U23-004 lies in their ability to determine the relative time of two adjacent slopes, fires, corresponding rates and deduce the direction of fire spread .Looking at the data, it appears that the hot, dry southwest facing slope of Lion Peak first burned as an intense "head" fire moved rapidly uphill. Nearby the northwest-facing slope of Lion Peak, just over the ridge, began burning at 20- After 30 minutes, the "support" of the fire slowly descended as a low-intensity fire. This information will help correlate the severity of weather conditions and fire behavior with wildfire impacts on vegetation."
Although his initial research was interrupted, the data retrieved from the damaged HOBO has the advantage of being extremely helpful in explaining the fire and its behaviour. Jeff plans to continue using HOBO loggers U23-001 , U23-002, U23-003, U23-004 to record the necessary data for his initial doctoral thesis despite the scorching environment.
"The survivability of these two data loggers for reduced intensity, short duration fires is truly remarkable. Thanks for such a very accurate and rugged product!"
