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Keetch–Byram Drought Index
The Keetch–Byram drought index (known as KBDI), created by John Keetch and George Byram in 1968 for the United States Department of Agriculture's Forest Service, is a measure of drought conditions. It is commonly used for the purpose of predicting the likelihood and severity of wildfires. It is calculated based on rainfall, air temperature, and other meteorological factors. The KBDI is an estimate of the soil moisture deficit, which is the amount of water necessary to bring the soil moisture to its full capacity. A high soil moisture deficit means there is little water available for evaporation or plant transpiration. This occurs in conditions of extended drought, and has significant effects on fire behaviour. In the United States, it is expressed as a range from 0 to 800, referring to hundredths of an inch of deficit in water availability; in countries that use the metric system, it is expressed from 0 to 200, referring to millimetres. See also *National Fire Danger Rating S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Department Of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an executive department of the United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commercial farming and livestock food production, promotes agricultural trade and production, works to assure food safety, protects natural resources, fosters rural communities and works to end hunger in the United States and internationally. It is headed by the secretary of agriculture, who reports directly to the president of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet. The current secretary is Brooke Rollins, who has served since February 13, 2025. Approximately 71% of the USDA's $213 billion budget goes towards nutrition assistance programs administered by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS). The largest component of the FNS budget is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as the 'Food Stamp' program), which is the cornerstone of USDA's nutrition assistance. The United Stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hydrology
Hydrology () is the scientific study of the movement, distribution, and management of water on Earth and other planets, including the water cycle, water resources, and drainage basin sustainability. A practitioner of hydrology is called a hydrologist. Hydrologists are scientists studying earth science, earth or environmental science, civil engineering, civil or environmental engineering, and physical geography. Using various analytical methods and scientific techniques, they collect and analyze data to help solve water related problems such as Environmentalism, environmental preservation, natural disasters, and Water resource management, water management. Hydrology subdivides into surface water hydrology, groundwater hydrology (hydrogeology), and marine hydrology. Domains of hydrology include hydrometeorology, surface-water hydrology, surface hydrology, hydrogeology, drainage basin, drainage-basin management, and water quality. Oceanography and meteorology are not included beca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hazard Scales
A hazard is a potential source of harm. Substances, events, or circumstances can constitute hazards when their nature would potentially allow them to cause damage to health, life, property, or any other interest of value. The probability of that harm being realized in a specific ''incident'', combined with the magnitude of potential harm, make up its risk. This term is often used synonymously in colloquial speech. Hazards can be classified in several ways which are not mutually exclusive. They can be classified by ''causing actor'' (for example, natural or anthropogenic), by ''physical nature'' (e.g. biological or chemical) or by ''type of damage'' (e.g., health hazard or environmental hazard). Examples of natural disasters with highly harmful impacts on a society are floods, droughts, earthquakes, tropical cyclones, lightning strikes, volcanic activity and wildfires. Technological and anthropogenic hazards include, for example, structural collapses, transport accidents, acciden ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eponymous Indices
An eponym is a noun after which or for which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. Adjectives derived from the word ''eponym'' include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Eponyms are commonly used for time periods, places, innovations, biological nomenclature, astronomical objects, works of art and media, and tribal names. Various orthographic conventions are used for eponyms. Usage of the word The term ''eponym'' functions in multiple related ways, all based on an explicit relationship between two named things. ''Eponym'' may refer to a person or, less commonly, a place or thing for which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. ''Eponym'' may also refer to someone or something named after, or believed to be named after, a person or, less commonly, a place or thing. A person, place, or thing named after a particular person share an eponymous relationship. In this way, Elizabeth I of England is the eponym of the Elizabethan era, but the Elizabethan e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Droughts
A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, and O. Zolina, 2021Water Cycle Changes. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1055–1210, doi:10.1017/9781009157896.010. A drought can last for days, months or years. Drought often has large impacts on the ecosystems and agriculture of affected regions, and causes harm to the local economy. Annua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index
The McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) was developed in the 1960s by CSIRO scientist A. G. McArthur to measure the degree of danger of fire in Australian forests. The index combines a record of dryness, based on rainfall and evaporation, with meteorological variables for wind speed In meteorology, wind speed, or wind flow speed, is a fundamental atmospheric quantity caused by air moving from high to low pressure, usually due to changes in temperature. Wind speed is now commonly measured with an anemometer. Wind spe ..., temperature and humidity. A similar approach was adopted by McArthur for grassland areas. Luke and McArthur details the early development and use of these indices. In 1980 Noble et al. produced algorithms based on mathematical equations of best fit. These algorithms have been used since the early 1980s to enable easy computation. However they are often used with input values outside McArthur's intended design, resulting in FFDI values in excess ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Standardised Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index
The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) is a multiscalar drought index based on climatic data. It was developed by Vicente-Serrano et al. (2010) at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology in Zaragoza, Spain. It can be used for determining the onset, duration and magnitude of drought conditions with respect to normal conditions in a variety of natural and managed systems such as crops, ecosystems, rivers, water resources, etc. The SPEI accounts not only for precipitation deficit but also for the role of the increased atmospheric evaporative demand on drought severity. Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Evaporative demand is particularly dominant during periods of precipitation deficit. The SPEI calculation requires long-term and high-quality precipitation and atmospheric evaporative demand datasets. These can be obtained from ground stations or gridded data based on reanalysis as well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Fire Danger Rating System
National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) is used in the United States to provide a measure of the relative seriousness of burning conditions and threat of wildfires. Background John J. Keetch, a fire researcher in the southeast, wrote that "One of the prime objectives of the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) is to provide as accurate a measure as possible of the relative seriousness of burning conditions and thereby, NFDRS can serve as an aid to fire control programs." In 1954 there were eight different fire danger rating systems in use across the United States. Better communication and better transportation were beginning to make mutual assistance agreements between fire control agencies more practical than in the past. State compacts, and in the case of the federal government, interagency and interregional agreements were bringing fire control teams together from widely separated areas of the county. It became necessary to establish a national system for estimating ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Forest Service
The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the United States Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 United States National Forest, national forests and 20 United States National Grassland, national grasslands covering of land. The major divisions of the agency are the Chief's Office, National Forest System, State and Private Forestry, Business Operations, as well as Research and Development. The agency manages about 25% of federal lands and is the sole major national land management agency not part of the United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of the Interior (which manages the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management). History In 1876, Congress formed the office of Special Agent in the Department of Agriculture to assess the quality and conditions of forests in the United States. Franklin B. Hough was appointed the head of the office. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metric System
The metric system is a system of measurement that standardization, standardizes a set of base units and a nomenclature for describing relatively large and small quantities via decimal-based multiplicative unit prefixes. Though the rules governing the metric system have changed over time, the modern definition, the International System of Units (SI), defines the metric prefixes and seven base units: metre (m), kilogram (kg), second (s), ampere (A), kelvin (K), Mole (unit), mole (mol), and candela (cd). An SI derived unit is a named combination of base units such as hertz (cycles per second), Newton (unit), newton (kg⋅m/s2), and tesla (unit), tesla (1 kg⋅s−2⋅A−1) and in the case of Celsius a shifted scale from Kelvin. Certain units have been Non-SI units mentioned in the SI#Units officially accepted for use with the SI, officially accepted for use with the SI. Some of these are decimalised, like the litre and electronvolt, and are considered "metric". Others, like ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transpiration
Transpiration is the process of water movement through a plant and its evaporation from aerial parts, such as leaves, stems and flowers. It is a passive process that requires no energy expense by the plant. Transpiration also cools plants, changes osmotic pressure of cells, and enables mass flow of mineral nutrients. When water uptake by the roots is less than the water lost to the atmosphere by evaporation, plants close small pores called stomata to decrease water loss, which slows down nutrient uptake and decreases CO2 absorption from the atmosphere limiting metabolic processes, photosynthesis, and growth. Water and nutrient uptake Water is necessary for plants, but only a small amount of water taken up by the roots is used for growth and metabolism. The remaining 97–99.5% is lost by transpiration and guttation. Water with any dissolved mineral nutrients is absorbed into the roots by osmosis, which travels through the xylem by way of water molecule adhesion and coh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
