Characterizing fuels in the 21st Century

The ongoing development of sophisticated fire behavior and effects models h as demonstrated the need for a comprehensive system of fuel classification that more accurately captures the structural complexity and geographic dive rsity of fuelbeds. The Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team (F ERA) of the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, is dev eloping a national system of fuel characteristic classification (FCC). The system is designed to accommodate researchers and managers operating at a v ariety of scales, and who have access to a variety of kinds of input data. Users can generate fuel characteristics by accessing existing fuelbed descr iptions (fuelbed prototypes) using generic information such as cover type o r vegetation form. Fuelbed prototypes will provide the best available predi ctions of the kind, quality and abundance of fuels. Users can accept these default settings or modify some or all of them using more detailed informat ion about vegetation structure and fuel biomass. When the user has complete d editing the fuelbed data, the FCC system calculates or infers quantitativ e fuel characteristics (physical, chemical, and structural properties) and probable fire parameters specific to that fuelbed. Each user-described fuel bed is also assigned to one of approximately 192 stylized fuel characterist ic classes.