Wildland Fire Behavior at the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab - Dr. Sara McAllister
3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Fire Protection Engineering Department
FPE SEMINAR SERIES
Friday, May 16, 2025
3:00 – 4:00 pm
50 Prescott Street, Gateway II, Room 1226
https://wpi.zoom.us/j/96874207724
Wildland Fire Behavior at the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab
Sara McAllister, PhD
Research Mechanical Engineer, Forest Service
Rocky Mountain Research Center - Missoula Fire Science Lab
ABSTRACT
Impacts from wildland fires have seemingly only increased as wildfires now routinely make headlines, pump smoke across the continent, and burn more structures and area every year. This talk will begin by introducing the causes of the current “wildfire problem” in the U.S.: the growth of the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), climate change, and the more than one hundred years of fire exclusion from the landscape. Our history of wildland fire relates to both the cause and the cure for the current “wildfire problem.” The path forward requires accepting that wildland fires will, and should, happen, but it needs to be the right kind of fire under the right conditions. Unfortunately, fundamental understanding of the processes controlling wildland fire behavior is lacking and this limits our ability to safely train our firefighters, predict fire behavior, and understand how to mitigate its effects. An overview of the current work at the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab to address this lack of understanding will be given. However, much more work needs to be done before we have confidence in our prediction capabilities and be able to reduce the impact of wildland fire on our communities. The talk will conclude with a discussion of these outstanding research needs.
BIOGRAPHY
Sara McAllister earned her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2008 from the University of California, Berkeley. Her Ph.D. dissertation, sponsored by NASA, focused on material flammability in spacecraft. Since 2009, she has been a Research Mechanical Engineer with the U.S. Forest Service at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana. As part of the National Fire Decision Support Center, Sara’s research focuses on the fundamental governing mechanisms of wildland fire spread. Specifically, her research includes understanding the critical conditions for solid fuel ignition, flammability of live forest fuels, ignition due to convective heating, and fuel bed property effects on burning rate. She has authored two textbooks, one on combustion fundamentals and one on wildland fire behavior, as well as over 80 peer-reviewed publications and conference papers. In her spare time, Sara enjoys cycling, running, and racing in triathlons.