Mitigating risks with new software.

• Position: Wildfires

The development of geographic information science tools to help rangers and forest scientists determine whether logging or prescribed burning is the best way to reduce the fuel load to mitigate the risk of devastating wildfires is the goal of software-development work being done by Chris S. Renschler of the University at Buffalo (N.Y.) in conjunction with the U.S. Forest Service.

His groundbreaking work comes as the Bush Administration is reversing the roadless rule for Federal lands, potentially opening up 58,500,000 acres to logging, mining, and other commercial uses.

"Now that we have this rule change, the question is, 'Do we want to reduce the fuel load in a particular watershed by doing selected burning; should we build roads so that we can bring equipment in to log; or should we do both?'" asks Renschler, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography. "The tools we are developing can compare those two scenarios for a specific watershed and help managers make sound decisions."

This is an upgrade of an existing software package called GeoWEPP (Gee-spatial Interface for the Water Erosion Prediction Project) developed with the Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Agricultural Research Service. The features of the extension, to be released for testing later this year, will allow managers to use the software to simulate and predict the effects of erosion for watersheds covering up to 250,000 acres. The result will be much more precise predictions about the amount of erosion and sediment yield that will end up in nearby rivers. Earlier versions of GeoWEPP focused on...