An early warning from Alabama scientists stopped a planned burn at Alabama’s Gulf State Park and may have kept some firefighters safe, reports said Monday.

The real-time data was obtained from five soil moisture and temperature sensors developed and built at the University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Earth System Science Center. Besides the warning, the sensors also set a marker for just how dry is dry enough to go ahead safely with a burn.

Scientists use planned, controlled fires to keep undergrowth from reaching the size that would fuel dangerous fires. Associate State Climatologist Dr. Lee Ellenburg installed five of the soil moisture and temperature sensors at the park earlier this year to measure moisture content from the surface to about two feet below ground.

“The soil moisture sensors indicated quickly drying soils within the prescribed burn area in late July that began to translate to a dropping water table,” Ellenburg said this week. “This provided an early warning for conditions to come.”

“This is the first time our team has had real-time soil moisture measurement data at a prescribed burn site,” Alabama Forestry Commission Fire Analyst Ethan Barrett said. “This data was invaluable, as we have a certain threshold of how dry the soil conditions can be to conduct a prescribed burn.”

The Alabama Forestry Commission said safety of its crews and the public is its top priority. The organization wants to know not only how dry soils are, but also the wind speed, rain and humidity over the burn site. This time, the UAH data “gave us a two-week heads-up,” Barret said.

The sensors were developed by Ellenburgh’s team at UAH including Earth Science Student Specialist Nick Perlaky. They are part of a broader research effort to study soil moisture and fire effects. Scientists think using the sensors together with traditional fire modeling can help investigators to “more intuitively monitor fire danger” and implement burn restrictions before future wildfires.

“The soil moisture sensors are part of a broader research initiative investigating the role of soil moisture in determining the health of the vegetation on the ground, and thus how the fire will respond,” Ellenburg said.

Alabama has 23 million acres of timberland, the UAH report said, making it the second-largest timber acreage in the United States.