Team: 55
School: Monte del Sol
Area of Science: Environmental Science
Proposal: Problem: What is the effect of climate change on the speed of a forest fire?
Why is it important: Forest fires are common in the western United States and negatively affect the ecosystem and many humans lives. For example, California has experienced record-breaking numbers of fires in recent years. It is important to study how climate affects this and how global climate change influences the frequency and severity of these forest fires.
What results do you hope to get: We hope to find which characteristics of climate alters a fire in the most negative way. We specifically will look for which variable: temperature or moisture, causes the highest speed and, thus, severity of a forest fire. We hope to find this because then we could determine ways to predict them or make them less catastrophic.
How do you plan to work on it: Our plan is to use NetLogo to model a forest ecosystem. We will manipulate variables, such as moisture and temperature, by making sliders to show what kind of climate factors affect the forest. We will research forest fires and climate factors to determine how they affect the speed of a fire. We will then use living tree and dead tree counters to create data to make this a testable model.
Team Members:
Sponsoring Teacher: Rhonda Crespo