NASA budget cuts put wildfire fighting programs at risk

HINESVILLE, Ga. — From an altitude of 9,000 feet, NASA scientists soared over hundreds of acres of burning brush this month at Fort Stewart Army base, monitoring the flames as they spread and engulfed the land.

This time, the blaze was a controlled one, set intentionally to clear the area in what’s known as a “prescribed burn.” But the research, which makes up NASA’s FireSense project, will help firefighters battle real wildfires when they do ignite, and it could even help land managers prevent some blazes from starting in the first place.

Yet with the Trump administration reportedly proposing steep budget cuts at NASA and other federal agencies, programs like FireSense could be in jeopardy — all while fire season is ramping up.

Last year, wildfires scorched nearly 9 million acres in the United States, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The agency’s annual report found that the number of wildfires reported in 2024 and the acres burned were both “noticeably higher than the five and 10-year averages.”

Studies have shown that climate change is not only making wildfires more frequent but also intensifying the blazes that do ignite, making them more destructive.

“The problem is getting worse,” said Michele Steinberg, wildfire division director at the nonprofit National Fire Protection Association. “We are seeing more fires in areas we don’t normally see them and in seasons we don’t expect them. We’re seeing fires burning hotter and more intensely, and when you get just the right conditions, they can move very fast.”

The extreme fires pose enormous health, financial and environmental risks, which make studying them crucial for protecting lives and livelihoods.

NASA is hardly alone in focusing its attention on wildfires. The U.S. Forest Service, the Interior Department and the Bureau of Land Management are some of the key federal agencies involved with wildfire response and prevention. But what the space agency is doing differently is applying advanced technologies — including some that are similarly used for satellites in space — to fill gaps in knowledge.

“FireSense was born because NASA said: Wildfires are a big and emerging problem, and we’re going to invest and we’re going to use our skill set to help the rest of the government do its job better,” said Michael Wara, a lawyer and senior research scholar at Stanford University who specializes in climate and energy policy.

The project’s scientists work with local, state and federal agencies — as well as partners in academia — to better understand fire behavior and intensity, air quality concerns during and after wildfires and how ecosystems recover following blazes. The researchers are also studying how to manage vegetation in vulnerable areas to lower the risk of wildfires or halt their rapid spread.

“The goal is to take our innovative technology, go into the field with wildland fire managers and actually transfer that innovative technology so that they can use it on a wildland fire,” said Jacquelyn Shuman, the project scientist for NASA FireSense.

The project uses an instrument known as a spectrometer that is the same design as one that operates in low-Earth orbit aboard the International Space Station. It’s that technology that can provide detailed and precise measurements that help firefighters and land managers before, during and after extreme fires.

At Fort Stewart, the scientists flew over the prescribed burn, watching its movement and mapping the blaze using a sophisticated infrared instrument known as AVIRIS-3 (short for Airborne Visible and InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer 3). The fire would eventually engulf around 700 acres.

They paid particular attention to how fast the fire was spreading, where it was gaining ground and how hot it was.

Prescribed burns are fires that are intentionally set to manage ecosystems that need periodic fires to stay healthy. They are also carried out to reduce the amount of dry and flammable vegetation that could easily catch flame.

The burns are carefully planned and executed under specific weather conditions to maintain control over their spread, but those practices also function as science experiments for wildfire researchers, said Harrison Raine, a former elite firefighter who now works as a project coordinator for FireSense.

“We’re trying to combine all aspects of the fire life cycle and using science to understand what is happening and what we can do about it,” said Raine, who used to work as a “hotshot” firefighter, a member of a crew of highly trained and specialized people who are dispatched to wildland fires across the country.

Raine has fought wildfires in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and California, and the work is more than just a job for him.

“This is a deep personal issue for me,” he said. “I’m from Los Angeles. I’ve seen kind of the devastation and really trying to tackle this huge problem. And it takes every tool that we have, and science is a big one.”

But with big questions lingering over funding for NASA and other federal agencies, the future of FireSense may be in jeopardy.

It’s not clear how, if at all, the project may be affected by budget rollbacks, but early reports have signaled deep cuts to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, which includes Earth science initiatives.

“No funding decisions have been finalized,” Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget, told NBC News in a statement. NASA declined to comment and directed budget questions to OMB.

As the administration prepares to unveil a draft budget soon, anxieties over the possible cuts and their consequences have been running high.

“As a former NASA leader, I’m proud of the wide range of efforts the agency supports for wildfire monitoring and response,” Rep. George Whitesides (D-Calif.) told NBC News in a statement. “Cuts to crucial wildfire programs like Firesense put communities like mine — which are just beginning to rebuild after the devastating Southern California fires — at extreme risk.”

Axing NASA’s wildfire research would have far-reaching impacts, Wara of Stanford University said, adding that the space agency has made enormous contributions to modernizing wildfire models and data on blazes.

“There’s no question that our level of information about fire and fire risk has improved with FireSense,” he said. “It would be a shame to lose it, because it would be very hard to get back.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com