Small UASs for Fire Weather and Fire Behavior Monitoring in the Wildland Fire Environment

With the increase in commercially available small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS), new observations in extreme environments are becoming more obtainable. One such application is the fire environment where measuring both fire and atmospheric properties are challenging. The Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE ) offered a unique opportunity of a large controlled wildfire, which allowed measurements that cannot generally be taken during an active wildfire. Fire-atmosphere interactions have typically been measured from stationary instrumented towers and remote sensing systems such as lidar. Advances in sUAS and compact meteorological instrumentation have allowed for small moving weather stations that can move with the fire front while sampling. This study highlights the use of DJI Matrice 200 that was equipped with a Trisonica mini 3D sonic anemometer weather station in order to sample the fire environment in an experimental and controlled setting. The weather stations was mounted on a 1.5m carbon fiber pole extending off the side of the platform. The system was tested against an ATI, Sx sonic anemometer mounted at 10 m AGL to assess any bias in the sUAS platform. Preliminary data show that this system can be useful for taking vertical wind profiles near wildfires, in place of tower or lidar measurements.