Nicole Vaillant
A Pacific
A,
Alan Ager
A,
John Anderson
Northwest Research Station, WWETAC, Prineville OR;
B
B BalanceTech,
LLC, Missoula MT
www.fs.fed.us/wwetac/arcfuels
Fire behavior modeling and geospatial analyses can provide tremendous insight for land managers as they grapple with the complex problems frequently
encountered in wildfire risk assessments and fire and fuels management planning. Fuel management often is a particularly complicated process in which the
benefits and potential impacts of fuel treatments need to be demonstrated in the context of land management goals and public expectations. The fuel
treatment planning process is complicated by the lack of data assimilation among fire behavior models and weak linkages to GIS, corporate data, and desktop
office software. ArcFuels is a streamlined fuel management planning and wildfire risk assessment system that creates a trans-scale (stand to large landscape)
interface to apply various forest growth and fire behavior models within an ArcGIS platform to design and test fuel treatment alternatives.
ArcFuels Highlights
Packages existing forest growth & visualization models & fire behavior models
in ArcGIS (table below).
Streamlined fuel management planning and wildfire risk assessment system
Creates a trans-scale interface to apply various forest growth & fire behavior
models
Automates FVS/FFE-FVS runs allowing for rapid treatment analysis for a stand
or landscape & makes FVS/FFE-FVS spatially explicit
Exports & graphs stand level FVS/FFE-FVS outputs, including treatment
comparisons
Quickly build and clip landscape files from grid data, FFE-FVS data, or a
combination for use with FARSITE, FlamMap, etc.
Rapid landscape fuel treatment design & “implementation”
Tools to complete wildfire risk assessments
Eliminates a number of tedious data transformations and repetitive processes.
Model
Description
The ArcFuels toolbar has been set up to follow a typical fuel treatment
planning work flow.
Steps include:
Obtaining data
Critiquing & updating data
Modeling existing conditions
Creating treatment alternative(s)
Assessing the effectiveness of the alternative(s)
Black boxes represent ArcFuels specific functionality.
Data Requirements
ArcFuels uses FVS (stand & treelist data) and/or raster data (i.e., LANDFIRE).
Stand/plot data
1. FVS ready
database
2. Stand polygon
layer
Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) Individual-tree, distance-independent growth and yield model
Stand Visualization System (SVS)
Fire and Fuels Extension to FVS
(FFE-FVS)
NEXUS
BehavePlus
FlamMap
Fire Area Simulator (FARSITE)
First Order Fire Effects Model
(FOFEM)
Landscape Treatment Designer
(LTD)
Fire Family Plus
Generates graphics depicting stand conditions
Stand-level simulations of fuel dynamics, potential fire behavior and fire
effects over time
Stand-level spreadsheet that links surface and crown fire prediction models
Stand-level fire behavior, fire effects, and fire environment model
Landscape-level fire behavior mapping and analysis program
Landscape-level fire spread simulator
Stand-level first order fire effects modeling system
Landscape-level fuel treatment planning tool
Fire weather
3. Slope raster
4. Aspect raster
5. Elevation raster
Download & Tutorials
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Raster data
Slope
Aspect
Elevation
Fuel model
Canopy cover
Canopy base
height
Canopy bulk
density
Canopy height
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Other data
Weather data
Project boundary
Past disturbance
layers
Resource value
layers
Treatment units
Roads
Vegetation layers
Etc.
Available at the ArcFuels website
 ArcFuels for ArcGIS 9.x and 10.x
 Detailed tutorials for ArcFuels & linked programs
 All the programs you need to use ArcFuels
 Demonstration data
 Exercise outputs
 Supporting documentation
ArcFuels and Wildfire Risk Assessments
ArcFuels and FVS/FFE-FVS
ArcFuels has an integrated GUI for running FVS at the stand and landscape
scales. Some of the features unique to ArcFuels include:
Crowning Index (CI)
• Automated Excel (stand) and Access (landscape) outputs
• Automated SVS files
• Many FFE keywords hardwired for rapid runs
• Rapid prescription assessment/analysis
Automated graph showing the
of different thinning
• Join FVS outputs to a stand polygon file for a given year effect
intensities on predicted crowning
index.
• Build LCPs for fire modeling from FVS outputs
A
C
B
A
B
FVS treatment
files (KCP) can be
quickly applied to
stands to create
landscape
treatment plans a
number of ways,
the form (A) for
ArcSelected stands
is shown (B).
D
A
Inventory
data
ArcFuels automates the process of calculating the NVC for any highly valued
resources using burn probabilities and intensities simulated in FlamMap5 (a.k.a.
FLP file) and stylized response functions (shown above) or loss databases also
created in ArcFuels via FVS.
B
FVS simulation
FVS prescriptions
Wildfire risk is the product of the likelihood of a fire occurring (burn probability),
the associated fire behavior when a fire occurs, and the effects of the fire
(response function). The quantitative definition is called the Net Value Change
(NVC).
Access output
database
ArcFuels process
Slope, aspect &
elevation rasters
ArcGIS fuel rasters
ArcFuels process
Landscape file (LCP)
Linkage of FVS database and stand shapefile (A), SVS run for the same
stand (B) and forms in ArcFuels to run the stand level FVS (C&D).
Flow of LCP creation in ArcFuels from raster data and FVS data (A).
Form in ArcFuels used to build an LCP from FVS data using two
databases, no treatment and a WUI treatment alternative (B).
ArcFuels form used to create a loss
function database in FVS to couple with
FlamMap5 outputs to calculate NVC.
ArcFuels and FlamMap
ArcFuels is used for both pre-processing (i.e., building LCPs) data for use with
FlamMap (also FARSITE & FSim) and post processing.
Use
ArcFuels
to update
raster
data to
represent
current
conditions
before
building
your LCP.
A
B
Rapidly convert fire
size list text outputs
from FlamMap5 (A)
to projected
shapefiles (B).
B
ArcFuels form used to calculate NVC with
stylized response functions.
ArcFuels is also used for other aspects of wildfire risk such a calculating the
conditional flame length and source sink ratio, and averaging data to create risk
scatters and curves from FlamMap5 outputs.
ArcFuels form (left) used to
create a risk scatter plot of
calculate average conditional
flame lengths and burn
probabilities (below A) and a
risk curve (below B) for
dominant forest types.
Using an attributed shapefile (A) to
define the location and type of treatment
to update rasters and create an LCP (B).
A
ArcFuels form used to calculate NVC
with loss function database from FVS.
A
Batch convert,
B
project, and map
ASCII files to rasters
all in one step (A).
And an example of
MTT arrival time
raster with the MTT
major paths and
ignition line overtop
(B).
Scatter plots and risk curves
can be used to show the
relative risk of different
subunits (polygons) within a
landscape.
ArcFuels form used to calculate conditional flame lengths from a FLP
file generated in FlamMap5.
ArcFuels Citations
Contact information
Vaillant, N.M., Ager, A.A., Anderson J. 2013. ArcFuels10 system overview. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-875.
Portland, OR: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 65 p.
Nicole Vaillant (nvaillant@fs.fed.us)
Alan Ager (aager@fs.fed.us)
Ager, A.A., Vaillant, N.M., Finney, M.A. 2011. Integrating fire behavior models and geospatial analysis for wildland
fire risk assessment and fuel management planning. Journal of Combustion, Article ID 572452, 19 pages.