Rocky Mountain Research Station

Title: A comparison of geospatially modeled fire behavior and fire management utility of three data sources in the southeastern United States

Author: Hollingsworth, LaWen T.; Kurth, Laurie L.; Parresol, Bernard R.; Ottmar, Roger D.; Prichard, Susan J.

Date: 2012

Source: Forest Ecology and Management. 273: 43-49.

Description: Landscape-scale fire behavior analyses are important to inform decisions on resource management projects that meet land management objectives and protect values from adverse consequences of fire. Deterministic and probabilistic geospatial fire behavior analyses are conducted with various modeling systems including FARSITE, FlamMap, FSPro, and Large Fire Simulation System. The fundamental fire intensity algorithms in these systems require surface fire behavior fuel models and canopy cover to model surface fire behavior. Canopy base height, stand height, and canopy bulk density are required in addition to surface fire behavior fuel models and canopy cover to model crown fire activity. Several surface fuel and canopy classification efforts have used various remote sensing and ecological relationships as core methods to develop the spatial layers. All of these methods depend upon consistent and temporally constant interpretations of crown attributes and their ecological conditions to estimate surface fuel conditions.

Keywords: fire behavior, FlamMap, Fuel Characteristic Classification System, LANDFIRE, Southern Wildfire Risk Assessment

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Citation

Hollingsworth, LaWen T.; Kurth, Laurie L.; Parresol, Bernard R.; Ottmar, Roger D.; Prichard, Susan J.  2012.  A comparison of geospatially modeled fire behavior and fire management utility of three data sources in the southeastern United States.   Forest Ecology and Management. 273: 43-49. .