It is early December and wildfire season for Idaho State University’s Keith Weber, Director of the Idaho State University GIS Training and Research Center, is just now winding down – or is it? “Wildfire managers now say we have to stop calling it a fire season and realize we are dealing with fire years,” Weber said. “The wildfire activity ebbs and flows, but there really is not a time when a wildfire cannot happen somewhere across the West.”
Weber is the principal investigator who developed and administers NASA’s GIS-based Rehabilitation Capability Convergence for Ecosystem Recovery (RECOVER) decision support system, which is an online mapping tool. Originally designed to help land and wildfire managers plan for the recovery after wildfires, it is now being used during active wildfires.