Reconciliation of Review Comments on:
The Fuel Characteristic Classification System – A system to build,
characterize, and classify fuels for resource planning
Roger D. Ottmar, David V. Sandberg, Cynthia L. Riccardi, and Susan J. Prichard
June 15, 2006
Note: Title of the manuscript has changed to better represent the intent of the paper.
Reviewers
Matt Dickinson – USDA Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station
Mark Finney – USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station
Mike Hilbruner – USDA Forest ServiceVegetation Management and Protection Research
Ruddy Mell – National Institute of Standards and Technology
Elizabeth Reinhardt – USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station
Scott Stephens – University of California Bekeley
Jon C. Regelbrugge—USDA Forest Service, San Bernardino National Forest
Matt Dickinson
From a naïve reader’s perspective, I think that the title for manuscript 1 needs to better
reflect that it includes an introduction to fire potential rating, otherwise, the titles suggest
that fire potentials are a completely separate subject and don’t have anything to do with
the FCCS.
Thank you for this comment about the title. I partially agree. However, after discussing
with other members of the FCCS team, we have come to a unanimous decision that the
FCCS was designed for fuelbed creation and classification with the hazard evaluation as
an add-on. We have opted to make the title clean and crisp to reflect the primary goal of
the system and capture the essence of the manuscript which is to give the reader an
overview of the system to set the stage for the other manuscripts. I have substantially
changed the title to read, “An overview of the Fuel Characteristic Classification System
—quantifying, classifying, and creating fuel beds for resource planning”.
What about non-North American efforts at fuel description? Page 4, line 2.
This is a great comment and I heard several other comments similar to this one at the
workshop. I have added several citations that pertain to important efforts in Canada and
Australia including Cheney and Sullivan (1997, Australia), Hirsch (1996, Canada),
Amiro (2001, Canada), Banfeld (2002, Canada), Cruz (2003a, Canada), and Cruz (2003b,
Canada).
Reinhardt (2005) is not in literature cited.
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Thank you for this good catch. I changed Reinhardt 2005 to Reinhardt et al. 1997.
Can you define FCCS fire potential at the beginning of the Fire Potentials section (page
5, line 19)? At that point, I didn’t know what they were.
Yes, that was an oversight on my part. I have added a definition of the FCCS potentials
at the beginning of the section..
In the ecological sense, physiognomy typically refers to outward appearance (e.g.,
shape), right? Consequently, I was confused when you put chemical features in the
physiognomic variable list (page 8, line 14).
Thank you for your thoroughness. I removed the word “chemical”.
Abundance, page 8, line 18. My preference would be “quantity”, since I think of
abundance as being the number of items.
This is a good call. Abundance does not strike my fancy either. I have changed
abundance to quantity as you have suggested.
“Mode data”, page 11, line 8, 9, and 10. Not sure what you mean here.
Thank you for the comment. The words “mode data” were confusing. I eliminated the
word d”mode”.
Page 12, line 8. How can a fuelbed consume and smolder fuels?
This is an excellent point. I have reworded the sentence to read: “Fire potentials are a set
of relative values that rate the intrinsic physical capacity of a wildland fuelbed to support
a surface fire (Sandberg et al. [companion paper]), crown fire (Schaaf et al. [companion
paper]), and to provide fuels for flaming, smoldering, and residual consumption
(Sandberg et al. [companion paper])”.
Page 12, line 21. “Surface fire potential”. I thought that this heading was lower in the
hierarchy than the following bolded heading. Some other format might work better.
I have corrected the formatting problem so the “Surface fire potential” is now lower in
the hierarchy than the FCCS potential. This is followed by the surface fire potential
components of reaction potential, spread potential, and flamelength potential. Thank you
for pointing this out.
One-half in should be ½ in or 0.5 in, I think (as it is later).
I have corrected this.
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Figure 4. Should “Fire Behavior Potential” be “Surface Fire Behavior Potential”?
Yes, it should be. I have corrected it.
Mark Finney
The paper is intended to overview the FCCS system. It begins by offering justification for
developing a this new system based on 1) the inadequacy of standard surface fuel models
to be used for crown fire or fuel consumption, 2) the lack of variability in actual fuelbeds
captured by existing models, 3) a need for “scientifically-based” system for classifying
fuel hazards that does not “oversimplify” fuel description. A listing and brief description
of the various components of the system is then given. In terms of the basic justification
for this system, it is difficult to find where the authors provide evidence that this new
system actually achieves their goals. Certainly, the traditional surface fuel models do
not include canopy fuels, but other fire behavior systems in use today (NEXUS,
FARSITE, BEHAVEPLUS, BurnUp in FOFEM) do require simplified inputs for CBH,
CBD, Canopy Cover and Stand Height and coarse woody fuels. The limitations of such
inputs to fire behavior models to reflect the variability seen in the field are the direct
result of the limits of the fire behavior models to physically explain how fuels influence
fire behavior. This leads to the reason why so few fuel models have been developed –
there is no confidence that 1) fuel data representing finer distinctions in loading or depth
are statistically different from either the fuel models or other fuel samples, and 2) the
simplistic fire behavior models can distinguish differences in fire behaviors from many
fuel types.
Yes, the intent of the paper is as you have outlined. It describes the system briefly to lay
the ground work for the more detailed papers that discuss specific aspect and features of
the FCCS. One thing that I adjusted from the review draft is the discussion of the
inadequacy of the fuel models. I toned down the rhetoric as to the inadequacy of other
fuelbed and fuel model systems. Basically I want the reader to know that there have been
advancements and this is another tool in their tool box, and all systems compliment each
other. Each fuel model or fuelbed system was designed to meet specific needs of an
individual or suite of fire behavior models, and in doing so often did not include fuelbed
components that were extraneous to the model they were to support. The FCCS was
developed to include all systems is not married to a specific software system with specific
objectives.
Lastly, there really is little indication that FCCS provides the user anything other than
more complicated fuel models (now called fuelbeds). These are apparently intended to
be applied broadly beyond the original sample data and thus, represent a de facto
oversimplification of reality that is no different than the criticized uses of the current fuel
models. If care is not taken to make sure that FCCS is not overpromised, it would
actually be disingenuous in claiming to solve problems inherent in the fuel-models, when
in fact fuel models are driven by fire behavior model limitations and make no promises
that they represent any particular area or vegetation or fuel more than they really do.
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Part of the difficulty is that this manuscript is an overview and is essentially introductory
material that sets the stage for the other papers. This material by itself is not intended to
be a typical data-rich analysis and discussion; system features are described without
support from specific data or examples. We hope that readers will read the collection of
manuscripts as a coherent package.
Page 9, line 9, it’s not clear how a single general fuelbed could really represent “the
broadest vegetation composition and structure” yet be represented by data from a
“single site”. These two statements cannot both be true. The variability among
thousands of possible sites within each ecosystem would certainly overwhelm any
distinction among ecosystems. This is, in fact, a general issue that is not addressed in the
ensuing pages that describe the ecological and vegetation categories that are part of the
system. Some effort must be made to support the notion that these vegetation
characteristics are meaningful to fuels, since clearly, fire behavior and fuel modeling in
the US has historically existed quite well with minimal reference to vegetation or
ecosystems.
The FCCS fuelbeds are both specific and general fuelbeds depending on the information
used to generate the fuelbed. Several large data sets from FIA or CVS plots were
synthesized to produce “general” fuelbeds. Site specific data from a scientific paper
would produce a “specific” fuelbed. The fuels data base indicates whether the fuelbed
was generated from site specific or general information. The next version of the FCCS
will split the fuelbeds into specific versus general categories.
I do take issue with your last statement. It is true, we have existed with minimal fire
behavior and fuel modeling in the U.S. However, with the increase in computer
processing and as our models become more sophisticated, why not advance the way we
characterize and classify fuels? This is particularly evident in the fire effects and smoke
management world. One of the biggest errors associated with fire effects predictions is
with how we characterize fuels and how each of those fuelbed categories consume. It is
important that we have a system that accounts for all those fuelbed elements.
Page 14 line 23, the claim is made that fuelbeds can be built and analyzed at “any scale
of interest”, yet no support for this is offered when it is well understood that variability in
fuels is not scale independent (any spatial scale would certainly not involve spatial
mixtures of fuels). Certainly, fire behavior cannot be realistically modeled at “any scale
of interest” using a single model, and there is no evidence is offered here for why fuels
can be sampled and represented this way either.
This statement has been changed to better reflect what I meant. I appreciate your
comment and can see how this statement does not adequately portray what I was trying to
communicate. The FCCS revolves around a fuelbed defined as “a relatively uniform unit
on the landscape that represents a unique combustion environment and that determines
potential fire behavior and effects”. Consequently, a user can create a fuelbed that
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describes any size of uniform area of interest, whether that is a 30 m2 area, 1 km2 area,
project area, or unit area.
A few sentences later, (page 15, line 5) it is claimed that FCCS fuelbeds can be used in
nearly any fire behavior or fuels model when this is actually false (there is no
synthesizing of fuel inputs to run Burnup, BEHAVE, NEXUS etc.) and page 7 line 14
states clearly that each fuelbed has yet to be assigned one of the 13 standard fuel models.
Thanks for pointing this out. This was a mistake on my part. We expected to have the
crosswalk between the FCCS fuelbeds and FCCS custom fuelbeds but it has not
happened at the time of this manuscript. I have reworded that sentence to say:
“Quantitative information from FCCS fuelbeds can be used in nearly any fire effects
model and to assist in building customized fuel models”.
Page 15, line 13. How will temporal changes in fuels be handled using FCCS? There is
nothing presented to indicate how this would happen—would this be left to individual
users to define fuel characteristics that depict different temporal stages? In which case,
on what basis do users acquire meaningful data to feed fuelbeds?
Temporal changes in the fuelbed will be defined by the managers. A new feature that is
being implemented in the FCCS is the ability to built fuelbed pathways. These pathways
have a time aspect and enable users of the system to build the list of fuelbeds that will be
required to cover their particular area of interest over time.
In summary, the manuscript is not ready for publication. The authors would benefit by
performing a careful revision to support the many claims and promises made, or betteryet reword them such that they can be supported. Such substantial reworking of the basic
premises on which FCCS is based will likely be a great deal of work and this is not
simply an editorial revision. This paper should probably be integrated with other papers
on FCCS afterward.
The FCCS team appreciates your comment and has been wrestling with the idea of how
to handle the overview paper. However, after careful thought and discussion, and
evaluation of other reviewer comments, we have decided to stick with the lead paper
being an overview of the FCCS. We feel there needs to be a simple synthesis of the
system as whole with the follow-up papers defining in much more detail specific aspects
of the FCCS.
Mike Hilbruner
I found this paper to be well written and meeting the purpose. I have noted some
suggestions in the draft and will make a couple of comments here as well.
Thank you very much for the compliment.
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This may be the place to discuss assigning a fire behavior prediction system model to a
FCCS fuelbed. There is mention of this capability in the text but words like “eventually”
and “anticipated” are used. Is it “there” now? How would these methods relate to
application of the key in Standard fire behavior fuel models: a comprehensive set for use
with Rothermel’s surface fire spread model driven by knowledge of the vegetation
contained for a FCCS fuelbed?
I’m not sure that this paper means to include a comprehensive overview of fuels
characterization in the “Early fuel characteristics systems “. It might be valuable to beef
this section up with more historical background. Each of the early systems or
approaches had some merit and many of the ideas carry forward to today. Earlier
systems tended not to be designed to drive models which is part of the problem that the
FCCS addresses so well. I’m thinking, for example, of the early R6 fuel rating guide
based on spread potential and resistance to control. Such conceptual systems were state
of the art not so long ago. Early in my career, I enjoyed the structure that the NFFL fuel
models (at the time) provided to consider such elements as fuel loading, fuel size, and the
various dimensions of fuel chemistry.
The intention is to portray to the reader the evolution of the FCCS and I strongly felt
there was no better way than to begin with a history lesson. As you probably recall, we
ran into a major stumbling block using fire behavior models within the Fire Emissions
tradeoff model. We also could not show emission production differences between
wildfire and prescribed fire during this landscape assessments using the fire behavior
models only. It is a classic example of how we adapted with research to improve our
ability to characterize fuels that led to our improved ability to provide landscape scale
assessments. It also show how we have kept up with the advancement of fire effects
models and are providing the fuels information needed to capture the structural diverse
fuelbeds represented throughout the United States.
One of my earlier publications specifically discussed the resistance to control and the 10
AM policy. However, that was in reference to the FCCS fire potentials as being the
major aspect of the FCCS. However, I now feel we need to step back and look at the
major reason we built the system This was to provide users the ability to quantify,
classify, and create fuelbeds. The fire potentials were somewhat of an add-on and I felt I
should not spend time in this overview paper discussing the older fire behavior rating
systems. I left that to the follow-up papers.
Here is an opportunity to play up the ability to drive current and future models
addressing fire behavior and fire effects, perhaps in the section titled “Fuel
Characteristic Classification System”
Thank you, Mike, for this comment. I have added a sentence that brings this point across.
I have added the sentence “The Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) was
designed to provide quantitative fuelbed information for many fire effects models and to
assist in building customized fuel models for national application in the United States”.
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The discussion labeled “Cover Type” on page 10 mentions crosswalks to existing cover
classifications. I feel that this section should be more informative about what the other
systems are and how the crosswalks are accomplished.
I simplified the discussion. We basically assigned a cover type based on the dominant
vegetation.
There are several terms introduced related to “available fuel”. I find myself wondering
how these terms relate to those described in Assessing crown fire potential by linking
models of surface and crown fire behavior. I think that Scott and Reinhardt’s discussion
of available fuel should at least be citied and perhaps the terms in this paper related to
those Scott and Reinhardt describe if that is possible. This whole topic is probably more
complicated than necessary, probably an artifact of different needs in different studies or
modeling approaches. Any clarification would be welcome.
The available fuel we describe is the fuel “available for consumption during the flaming,
smoldering, and residual combustion phases. Although Scott and Reinhardt mention
“available” canopy, they never define what “available” means. It could mean fuel
available for consumption but it could also mean canopy available for chipping or total
mass. I have clarified our definition of available fuel in the manuscript. Thank you for
pointing this out.
Ruddy Mell
This paper could take two forms. One would be a general overview, which is pretty much
what it is now. The other would be much more detailed giving recommended field
methods and examples for obtaining fuel data. In any case, I very much think some sort of
detailed write-up is needed. Right now it is not clear at all how any of the measurements
of height, moisture, percent cover (how does one decide whether or not the vegetation in
question is continuous or not?), sound vs. woody fuels, and all the other descriptors are
actually done.
This comment was mentioned by several reviewers. However, the FCCS team has
decided to go ahead and have an overview paper. This paper will describes the system
briefly to lay the ground work for the more detailed papers that discuss specific aspect
and features of the FCCS. In rewriting the other papers, we have tried to eliminate
redundancy.
Why is fuel loading only measured/obtained for some surface fuels such as nonwoody
vegetation and woody fuels? Fuel loading is needed for fire behavior models. Can fuel
loading be derived from the fuel descriptors in FCCS?
The fuel loading is acquired from the literature to develop the FCCS fuelbeds. All
categories of the fuelbed have fuel loadings either as input values or they are calculated.
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For example, the nonwoody fuelbed component has an input for fuel loading. However,
the shrub fuelbed component does not but it is calculated from the input variables
required such as percent cover and height. Fuel loading was rarely found in the literature
for shrubs but there were many biometric equations so we opted to calculate the loading.
We now have changed our thinking and the next version will have a place to enter the
shrub loading or you can have the FCCS calculate it. This is the way Consume 3.0 works
now for its required shrub fuel loading input.
An example of how one would obtain fuelbed data from expert opinion or the published
literature and how one assigns a 1 to 5 ranking would be helpful.
Thank you for this comment. I will pass onto Cynthia Riccardi, since I believe it should
go into the fuel characteristic paper.
Elizabeth Reinhardt
1. A good overview and introduction to the FCCS.
Thank you for the compliment!! I appreciate it.
2. I suggest changing the title. The word “Classification” seems confusing and wrong.
As the team clarified at the meeting, no statistical classification of fuels was
conducted. The system seems more like a vegetation classification, and yet that is
clearly not the intent. Classification requires some kind of criteria, or implies that a
key could be created. This is not consistent with the concept of a system that
accommodates many, many new fuelbeds created by different people (incidently, a
concept that I think is very useful). I also feel the word “build” is awkward. I
suggest “A system to describe and quantify fuels for resource planning.”
The FCCS respects your comment about the word “classification” and we have batted
this comment around many times. We have come to the conclusion that there are many
types of classifications and we feel strongly the FCCS is a type of classification. For
example, it classifies the fuelbeds by the 7 selection criteria. It also classifies each
fuelbed by its potential to support surface fire behavior, crown fire behavior, and
available fuel for consumption.
3. Pg 14. “The FCCS #466 will have a surface …” Is this right? I thought the FCCS
fuelbed numbers were between about 1 and 200 and were more like the names of the
fuelbeds.
Elizabeth, you caught a blunder. Thank you very much. It has been changed to read: “A
FCCS fuelbed with a fire potential of #466 will have a surface fire behavior potential
index of 4 (modest reaction potential, surface spread, and flame height), a crown fire
potential index of 6 (above average crowning potential representing 6 on a scale of 10),
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and an available fuel potential index of 6 (above average available fuel representing 60
tons acre-1 consumed)”.
4. Pg 15 and 16: “linkages exist or are in progress for… FFE-FVS…FOFEM..” I will
be glad to develop these linkages, but I haven’t been able to get the data I need to do
so. Which represents one of my big concerns about FCCS – it seems like the content
is hidden behind all this software. The actual data is the most important contribution
of this work, and yet we can’t get at the data very easily, either in these manuscripts
or with the software.
I always like your positive ideas and willingness to assist to make a better product for use
by managers. You are correct, the data base for the fuelbeds is in a data base that is
housed outside of the system. We know this is not the ideal situation and are working to
change the design.
Scott Stephens
5. In general I found this manuscript to be well written. One general comment is the use
of the term fuel loading throughout this and the other manuscripts. I would
recommend using fuel load to describe the quantity of biomass that has the potential
to burn. The addition of ing to the end of this word is not justified. You are simply
interested in the fuel loads, not fuel loading.
Thank you for the comment. I have removed the “ing” from loading.
6. The manuscript mostly introduces readers to a list of new fuel models used by the
FCCS system.
People are so institutionalized about fuel models that it is hard to break a habit.
However, the FCCS allows users to quantify, classify, and create fuelbeds, not fuel
models. We hope to eventually have a crosswalk from the fuelbeds to fuel models.
7. The introduction is very similar to that presented in manuscripts 1 and 4. It may be
best to combine this manuscript with ‘Calculating physical characteristics of
wildland fuels in the Fuel Characteristic Classification System’ as both of these
works are generally presenting information on a similar topic. Combining them
would also allow the creation of longer discussion sections (this manuscript has a 1.
page discussion) that would be needed for publication in a journal.
This comment was mentioned by several reviewers. However, the FCCS team has
decided to go ahead and have an overview paper. This paper will describe the system
briefly to lay the ground work for the more detailed papers that discuss specific aspect
and features of the FCCS. In rewriting the other papers, we have tried to eliminate
redundancy.
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8. Page 3, lines 16-20. Here you give a definition for a fuelbed. It will also be
important to include some measure of uniqueness of a fuelbed. If there are many
different fuelbeds created that are not statistically different from one another, then I
don’t know how you can present them separately. I understand that you have broad
objectives in this system, such as the amount of carbon on a site, versus other outputs
that are related to fire behavior. This is a challenging problem because in one case
(carbon inventory), the models may be unique and important, versus from a fire
behavior standpoint, the models may be similar. Somehow this problem will have to
be rectified. It may require the creation of different modules that allow the user to
select from a different set of inputs (i.e. fuelbeds) based on the question being asked.
Thank you for the comment. I have changed the sentence to describe how the system can
be used to build these very specific and unique fuelbeds. The sentence now reads: “In
this paper, we describe the Fuel Characteristic Classification System which provides fuel
and fire managers, scientists, and policy makers with a nationally consistent and durable
procedure to characterize and classify all components of both specific and general
fuelbeds and provides numerical inputs to fire behavior, fire effects, and dynamic
vegetation models”. I also appreciate your second comment. This is one reason we
produced a system that allows you to be as detailed or as general as you would like to be
depending on your end product.
9. The classification system used here is essentially based on vegetation characteristics
versus fuel characteristics. This may be better for most users of this system but is a
dilemma from a fire standpoint. If you classified by fuels up front you may be able to
delete many of the fuelbeds because they would be similar.
I believe your comment may depend on the type of fire models you are using. If you are
looking at the current fire behavior models, that would be true. However, as the science
advances, I believe you are going to need these fuelbed characteristics supplied by the
system. We already require this information for many of the current fire effects models.
Science does not stand still and one reason we built the system with this much
complexity is that we wanted the system to be around for awhile!!
10. You have quite a list of variables that depict a fuelbed. It would be very important for
you to specify which variables are critical for a particular application. I could see a
manager wanting to use your system and they would tell their summer crews to go out
and measure all of these variables. This would not be an efficient use of their time
and some direction from you on this topic would be very useful.
Excellent comment, Scott. I will pass this onto the lead author of the fuelbed paper. I not
only want to do a sensitivity test on the model to determine exactly how important each
input is, but I also want to put together a inventory protocol for each of the most
important variables.
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11. How would a manager assign these fuelbeds to a watershed with any accuracy or
precision? It is not feasible to collect fuel data on every acre so some sort of crosswalk between an existing vegetation map or a connection to some field based fuel
data will have to be attempted. That said, how could you possibly assign 25 different
coniferous forest fuelbeds to a watershed? Operationally I don’t know how to do
this. It is already challenging to do this with the limited number of models that we
have today.
Since this paper is an overview, I did not want to get into much detail about this subject
area. The four papers you reviewed did not discuss the application in detail of the FCCS.
However, after comments such as yours, Don McKenzie of our staff has drafted a paper
that will be part of this series. It discusses your question and provides a detail description
of how we have already assigned fuelbeds to the landscape. It is entitled: “Mapping fuels
at multiple scales: landscape application of FCCS” by Mckenzie, Raymond, Kellog,
Norheim, Andreu, Bayard, Kopper, and Ellman. I refer you to this paper since Don is the
expert.
Jon Regelbrugge
Please consider adding some discussion regarding how the system provides endless
detail and infinite variation in fuel characteristics and physical properties, but that it
remains unclear how much difference in fuels relates to a statistically significant,
physically important, or ecologically meaningful, difference in fire behavior or effects.
I have added several sentences to the “Overview” paper that discusses how this system
allows users to generate very specific to very general fuelbeds depending on you
objective. There are also several sentences that indicate that the sensitivity of the
different models may not require detailed information as the FCCS can provide.
However, science does not stand still and this system was built for future expectations
and we all know the models will increase in their sophistication and requirement of fuels
information. We have seen this in the past several years with respect to the fire effects
models.
Please discuss how change agents modify the fuelbeds (the fuelbeds with canned change
agents), and how users can effect change agents differently, including incorporating
different change agents.
I have passed this comment onto the fuelbed paper authors (paper 2).
I am still unclear why the mode is used rather than mean or median, and I think this
needs to be re-evaluated and the rationale clearly explained.
The explanation of why we used the mode is in paper 2. I will suggest it be expanded and
Cynthia Riccardi can develop a response. A short answer to your question is that the
mode represents the most common occurrence and not the mean. We feel the most
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common occurring value better represents a fuelbed and is also better for calculating
fuelbed characteristics and as inputs into other fire models.
I am unclear on how physical characteristics or physical properties of fuels differ, or if
they do.
Physical characteristic and physical properties basically are the same thing. We just used
different wording. We will try and make them consistent.
I think papers 1, 3, and 4 have so much overlap you should consider combining into one.
I fail to see the need for the three.
Comment noted. This comment was mentioned by several reviewers. However, the
FCCS team has decided to go ahead and have an overview paper. This paper will
describes the system briefly to lay the ground work for the more detailed papers that
discuss specific aspect and features of the FCCS. In rewriting the other papers, we have
tried to eliminate redundancy.
Need to clearly identify geographic area for which "canned" fuel models apply. For
example, I see the Sierra Nevada is the only physiographic province that directly pertains
to California. Lots of acres of wildlands exist in CA outside of the Sierra, and it is
unclear to prospective users to what extent the fuelbeds are reasonably used elsewhere.
You are correct. I believe you are referring to paper 2. However, for this paper, we
wanted to show the reader what fuelbeds were within the system and for simplicity, we
broke the fuelbeds into regions. The FCCS suggests you search by location, vegetation
form, and cover type.
I really like the fire potentials work, but I ask that you strongly consider the following
points regarding the description and application. Collapsing physical entities with
meaningful units into a dimensionless index does not make sense to me, is not clearly
explained as to rationale, obscures physical relationships, and I think raises the
likelihood of using the system to compare fuelbeds that are not comparable, e.g. is
southern rough more likely to crown that black spruce. I ask you to consider dropping
the three character summary, and reporting physical entities with units, unless you can
clearly justify why to keep the dimensionless indices and the three place summary.
Originally, Sam did not believe his new derivations and modifications were going to
work as well as they did. However, they have been shown to give reasonable results
using real fuelbeds and not fuel models. Consequently, we will be modifying the FCCS
to take environmental variables and will be predicting real fire behavior rather than an
index. I believe we will continue to keep the index since many of our clients like the
index for certain planning and assessment projects.
I am fascinated by Sam's reformulating of some of Rothermel's relationships, and the
supporting physical reasoning. I'd sure like to see these ideas explored and tested more
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fully, and yes, I recognize that this may be a topic of future research, and future papers.
For the current set, please be clear when you are hypothesizing or speculating, and in my
view, that does not diminish the usefulness or importance of the work.
This comment is more relevant for other manuscripts, and will be addressed in other
reconciliations..
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