New “BurnBot” tech aids Stanford in managing wildfire risk and resilience
Californians are no strangers to wildfires. The deadliest fire in California history was the Camp Fire in 2018 which burned 153 thousand acres. The year before that, the 2017 Tubbs Fire devastated Napa and Sonoma counties. As wildfires become an increasingly frequent and more destructive event, many are turning to the scientific community and searching for an answer to the question: How do we prevent another devastating fire before it happens?
Stanford has made wildfire management efforts a priority since 2019 by instituting the Wildfire Management Plan and strengthening it through collaboration with startups and researchers alike. The University has also strengthened partnerships with local fire departments and fire protection organizations by investing in early detection technologies that both inform and warn our communities of future wildfire threats.
In 2024, Stanford was a testing ground for new controlled burn chamber technology and began researching wildfire management with a new “BurnBot” that can create fuel breaks. BurnBot incinerates the vegetation at its front and immediately puts it out with water sprayers and rollers that tamp down any remaining embers. These remote-controlled, horse sized machines can safely introduce “good fire” to environments without creating a lot of emissions. Conservation program manager Esther Cole Adelsheim and the Stanford Conservation Program team collaborates with others across the university to implement environmental stewardship practices on campus. She emphasizes the importance of controlled burns to future fire management strategies, pointing to California’s long history of fire suppression methods as contributing to the buildup of fire fuels that can exacerbate wildfires.
“Stanford’s fire management work aims to rectify the impacts of fire suppression and prepare for the growing risks posed by climate change,” Adelsheim shares. The fire fuel reduction techniques, which are part of the Wildfire Management Plan, include mastication, hand thinning, pile burns at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve ('Ootchamin 'Ooyakma), livestock grazing, and creation of fire fuel breaks. In addition, Stanford has also installed 50 AI-based environmental sensors that can track fires from the earliest stages and alert first responders as they develop.
Stanford researcher Scott Fendorf and his team have also conducted research on the after-effects of wildfires on the environment. Through sampling air particles near to wildfire sites in Oregon and Idaho this past summer, Fendorf’s team discovered that wildfires can actually alter metals in the soil that can impact air pollution, water quality, and plant growth long after the fire has burned out.
Climate change and wildfires go hand-in-hand, and without proper management strategies employed to protect Californian ecosystems, our communities will remain at high-risk for these continued devastating disasters. The Stanford community is committed to applying groundbreaking research and cutting-edge technology to implement effective fire management strategies that strengthen partnerships with first responders and businesses alike to prevent wildfires and bolster the resilience of our lands and people.
