Examining the Relationships Between Soil Moisture, Live Fuel Moisture, and Spectral Reflectance in Grassland.

Live fuel moisture (LFM) is a key component in wildfire risk assessment and has been hypothesized to depend strongly on soil moisture, but few empirical studies have examined this relationship because LFM sampling is difficult and time-consuming and the fire research community has not focused on soil moisture, per se.  Live fuel moisture exhibits good correlation with several remote sensing indices, which are often easier to obtain than direct LFM measurements, but reliable soil moisture data are not typically available at the scale of the remote sensing footprint.  The objectives of this study are: 1) to examine the relationship between LFM and soil moisture in grasslands surrounding the Marena, Oklahoma, In Situ Sensor Testbed and 2) to determine the accuracy with which a handheld spectral reflectance sensor can be used for in situ nondestructive LFM measurement.