RAPID: Critical Wildfire Monitoring Utilizing the National Ecological Observatory Network Mobile Deployment Platform with Edge-computing Cyberinfrastructure

Wildfire frequency and intensity are highly likely to increase in forests of the U.S. Intermountain West, a region that is experiencing the worst drought in over a century. This RAPID project will utilize the Mobile Deployment Platform (MDP) of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) coupled with high-performance computing resources to enable responsive and real-time, data-driven soil sample collection during and immediately following wildfire activity.

This rapid response is vital to enable researchers to characterize changes in soil microbial community structure and carbon metabolizing ability during and following fire disturbance. The information obtained will be used for modelling the impact of wildfire and climate change, and to help guide forest land management.

The project will mount thermal imaging cameras equipped with the edge-enabled, intelligent sensor network known as "SAGE" on the NEON MDP along with in-situ edge computing resources to guide location of manual observational sampling in and adjacent to fire-exposed forest. Soil microbiota across a range of soil temperatures will be studied to examine their heterogeneity guided by thermal sensing.

Metagenomoic DNA sequence analysis will be used to study soil microbiome functional traits in the immediate aftermath of wildfire, and determine the impacts of shifts on carbon cycling and sequestration. The results will test whether real time data acquisition can effectively guide sensor placement and human observational sampling during and immediately following disturbance and test the coupled ability of the NEON platform and SAGE cyber-infrastructure to support real-time alerts when edge-based and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled algorithms detect anomalous conditions (e.g. additional smoke plumes).

This will be the first such use of the NEON MDP with SAGE cyber tools, and represents an urgent advance to enable scientists and managers to better understand the impacts of climate change, drought and wildfire disturbances.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.