When a fire dozer gets too close to the heat, the problem is not always the flames. It can be the machinery giving out first.

With peak wildfire season approaching, scientists with NASA’s FireSense project have built low-cost thermal sensors for fire bulldozers that alert firefighters when heat from a nearby fire reaches a dangerous level. The sensors also give researchers data on what happens beneath the canopy during a fire.

In April, researchers and firefighters met in southern Alabama to discuss firefighting challenges and advances and to demonstrate the technology. The event was part of a collaboration between NASA and the Alabama Forestry Commission, with a goal of making firefighting safer and gathering data on fire behaviour.

“As we try to develop technologies that allow us to understand and respond to wildfires with our partners, ground observations are vital to provide context for what we are seeing from space,” said Ian Brosnan, program manager for wildland fires at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley.

Firefighters across the United States use bulldozers, known as fire dozers, on the front line to clear vegetation and create fire breaks that slow or stop a wildfire’s spread. That work can put the machines and their operators within feet of the flames.

The Alabama Forestry Commission is switching its fleet to bulldozers with enclosed cabs known as envirocabs. The cabs are safer for operators than open cabs, but the enclosure makes it harder to tell when radiant heat from a fire has reached a dangerous temperature.

“It’s not so much about what’s going to burn the tractor up as what’s going to shut the tractor down,” said Ethan Barrett, AFC fire analyst.

High heat can short or melt electrical wiring, leaving the operator stranded in a dangerous environment.

Brosnan said developing the sensors for the Alabama Forestry Commission gave NASA a chance to build technology with an immediate effect on firefighter safety while also collecting information about conditions on the ground during a fire.

The commission wanted a sensor that was low-cost and easy to use.

“We used commercial, off-the-shelf components to make this,” said Jennifer Fowler, science integration manager for the wildland fires program at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “The thermocouple that sits in the window to measure temperature, for example, is the same one used in an oven or a kiln.”

The thermocouple is wired to a simple LED light on the dashboard in the operator’s line of sight. When it detects an unsafe temperature, the light starts blinking. The system runs on AA batteries.

“While installing the second sensor, we realized we needed an extra piece, so we just ran out to the local hardware store to grab it,” said Ryan Wade, research scientist with the University of Alabama, Huntsville and NASA FireSense. “NASA’s expertise in this case comes not in the novelty of the instrument itself, but in figuring out how to solve the problem quickly and integrate that technology into their existing system.”

Fowler installed the first sensor in September 2025, and Wade installed the second in March 2026.

“Since their installation, we have run them on wildfires and prescribed burns and they’ve been effective,” Barrett said. “They work exactly as intended, and the operators have said it leads to better situational awareness. Based on the success of this pilot, we are looking at outfitting all the dozers in our fleet.”

NASA and the Alabama Forestry Commission have been building their partnership for more than a year. Last spring, NASA scientists led training classes on weather and soil moisture with the commission and worked with ground crews to test airborne instruments on active wildfires.

Next, NASA FireSense and the commission plan to integrate the Fire Thermal InfraRed Spectrometer, or FireTIRS, to measure temperature, spread rate, flame length, fire convection and gas emissions.

Fowler is also evaluating anemometers and compact cameras for the dozers. Anemometers provide data on wind speed and direction, while compact cameras provide data on burn severity, rate of spread, and the type, volume, and consumption of fuels.

“This is the dataset that will get us to the next generation of fire models,” Fowler said. “It gives us the detailed understanding we need to create tools that can give firefighters more advanced notice of what a fire will do. On a wildfire, that extra time is everything.”

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