What is STARFire?

STARfire addresses strategic planning needs of federal wildland fire management agencies. It is the first system to integrate:

• Appropriate management response (AMR): When and where to suppress or encourage fires?
• Fuel treatment prioritization: Where are the best fuel treatment locations across the landscape? Using the benefits of hazardous fuel reduction and ecosystem improvement, STARfire provides managers with a strategic context for more specific location and design of fuel treatment project.
• Smoke Impacts: Quantifying the cost of smoke impact to AMR decisions

Developed to support strategic planning, STARfire has also provided managers with a useful context for incident management. First used at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in 2008, STARfire supported AMR decisions on the Tehipite fire.

Quantifying landscape level impacts

With a GIS platform, STARfire puts AMR, fuel treatment prioritization and smoke management in a landscape context.

Quatifying impacts across time

A temporal analysis enables managers to quickly quantify and assess the impacts of today’s decisions on the future condition of the landscape. Fuel treatments and AMR actions today affect the future landscape condition. Aggressive suppression today may mean a less viable landscape in the future. STARfire aids in quickly assessing these kinds of tradeoffs.

Partnerships

• National Park Service
• Bureau of Land Management
• National Interagency Fire Center