Victorians have an opportunity to become a 'citizen scientist' to help provide firefighters with critical information about the state's fire risk.
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The Country Fire Authority has recently released a new online module about grassland curing - the rate that grass dries out - and how the organisation uses the information in fire analysis.
After significant rainfall last year led to exceptional grass growth across the state, the new module has been launched during a season that presents a high risk of grass fires.
Deputy Group Officer in the Anakie Group of Brigades and Lethbridge CFA member, Brooke Killen, is a new official observer - one of about 125 active observers across the state.
Having been involved with the CFA for some time, he said he had "unofficially" done the role in the past but officially became an observer this year.
"You keep an eye on your patch to understand what's going on so that if there was an incident, you have a bit of extra information to bring into the mix and factor into how the fire might behave," he told The Courier.
Mr Killen said the online training program helped him to better understand grassland curing and how the CFA gathers data.
"It's an online program that was fairly comprehensive in helping you understand the official curing rates and what the materials look like at those different curing rates, whereas before you sort of went just on your best judgment.
"So it puts a quantity factor around what you're looking at it in the field so it is good value."
People can decide where they would like to make their observations-whether on their own property or elsewhere.
Once a week, he goes out to two select sites-one to the north of Lethbridge township and one to the west - where his local knowledge suggests fires have traditionally started.
Using the data guides provided, he makes an assessment of the level of curing, the height of the grass and the rainfall observations for the week before inputting the data.
Mr Killen said being an observer was easy and only took about 15 minutes each week but was hugely beneficial to help the CFA determine the fire risk and how fire might behave if it was to burn through a certain patch of land.
"The more intelligence we can get on fire and how it might behave is very important," he said, adding that brigades would often look to the grass curing maps that are released each week during the fire danger period to assess the risk.
"I think including real data from the ground is important to improve the accuracy so you've got the best picture of what may or may not happen if there's an incident."
I think including real data from the ground is important to improve the accuracy so you've got the best picture of what may or may not happen if there's an incident.
- Volunteer observer Brooke Killen
CFA remote sensing analyst, Danielle Wright, said ground observations were combined with satellite images to produce a map of Victoria that depicted how dry grass is across the state.
"Green grass is 0 per cent cured, while grass that is totally dried out is 100 per cent cured, and those numbers can help calculate the grassland fire danger index," she said.
"It's very important for identifying fire danger ratings, and feeds into fire behaviour modelling."
Ms Wright said ground observations were "crucial" as satellite images could sometimes over-estimate or under-estimate curing.
"A paddock might have tall, dry grass but after some heavy rainfall there could be green shoots coming through which wouldn't affect fire behaviour, but would still be picked up by the satellite."
The CFA has been recording grassland curing measurements in Victoria for decades. It has also been delivering grassland curing maps for other states since 2015.
Project coordinator Angela Gardner said it was hoped the new training model would encourage new volunteer observers to participate.
"While a lot of people who do it are CFA members, it's open to anyone from the public.
"People can actually do the course for their own awareness but if you'd like to sign up as an observer at the end, we'll send a more detailed booklet to support you."
People can register for the Grassland Curing Observer course at learninghub.cfa.vic.gov.au
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