Developing FCCS Fuelbeds for the Angora Fire Region
Theme: Forest Management and Fuels Reduction
Subtheme: Fire and Fuels
Principal Investigator:
Roger D. Ottmar
U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station
400 North 34th Street, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98103
Phone: (206) 732-7826
Fax (206) 732-7801
rottmar@fs.fed.us
Co-Principal Investigator:
Hugh Safford
U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region
1323 Club Drive, Vallejo, CA 94592
Phone: (707) 562-8934
Fax (707) 562-9050
hughsafford@fs.fed.us
Grants Contact Person:
Tammy Verhunc
Phone (503) 808-2117
Fax (503) 808-2130
tverhunc@fs.fed.us
Total Funding Requested: $73,130
Total Value of In-Kind and Financial Contributions: $73,000
II. Project Narrative
a. Justification Statement
The U.S. Forest Service Region 5 is preparing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that will guide Angora
Fire post-fire restoration activities. A critical component to the EIS will be to define and create potential fuelbeds
resulting from future restoration projects, climatic change, and fuels management within the Angora wildfire
perimeter and the surrounding watershed. Defining fuelbeds will enable managers to better plan the restoration
projects and account for potential fire hazard and other resources such as wildlife habitat. The fuelbeds and
characteristics will also provide inputs for current and future models for the quantification of fire behavior, fire
effects, smoke and pollutant management, and carbon accounting and enable assessment of fuel treatment
effectiveness, and will have application outside of the Angora Fire region as well, as similar vegetation and fuels
conditions are found throughout the Lake Tahoe Basin, especially on the west shore. The Fuels Characteristic
Classification System (FCCS; Ottmar et al. 2007; http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/fera/fccs/index.shtml) is a tool that
can build the fuelbeds, calculate flame length and rates of spread based on specified environmental conditions,
determine a surface fire behavior and crown fire potential ranking, and report total carbon associated with each
fuelbed. It will also cross-walk each customized fuelbed to a original 13 or standard 40 fuel models. CONSUME
3.0 (http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/fera/research/smoke/consume/index.shtml) is an associated program that can
calculate the consumption and emissions produced from burning of the FCCS fuelbeds and generate predictions
for smoke and air pollutant production.
b. Background and Problem Statement
Ongoing development of complex fire behavior and fire effects software and the implementation of wildland
fire emissions and carbon assessments have demonstrated the need for a system to quantify and classify
wildland fuels. Fuelbeds vary widely in their physical attributes, potential fire behavior, and fire effects, but
current standard fuel models used by most agencies are very gross in their representation of fire behavior, and
only apply to surface fuels. A comprehensive software system is needed to accurately capture the structural
complexity and geographical diversity of fuel components across landscapes and provide the ability to assess
factors of human change (e.g., logging slash) and natural change (e.g., fire, insect, disease).
The Fire and Environmental Research Applications team (FERA) of the Pacific Northwest Research Station’s
Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory (U.S Department of Agriculture, Forest Service) has developed a
national Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) to meet this need. The system offers consistently
organized fuels data, along with numerical inputs to fire behavior, fire effects, and dynamic vegetation models.
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Users can access a fuelbed from 216 “stock” FCCS fuelbeds contained in database compiled from
published, unpublished literature, fuels photo series, fuels data sets, and expert opinion; or modify
existing descriptions with enhanced information to create a set of fuelbeds to represent a particular scale
of interest.
When the user has completed editing the fuelbed data, FCCS reports the assigned and calculated fuel
characteristics for each existing fuelbed component including the trees, shrubs, grasses, woody fuels,
litter, and duff.
FCCS calculates a surface fire behavior, crown fire, and available fuel potential index between 0- 9 for
each FCCS National or customized fuelbed. These FCCS fire potentials facilitate communication
among users and provide an index representation of the intrinsic capacity of each fuelbed for surface fire
behavior, crown fire and available consumption of fuels.
FCCS also reports predicted surface fire behavior, including reaction intensity (BTU ft-2 min-1), flame
length (ft), and rate of spread (ft min-1), under benchmark environmental conditions. Benchmark
environmental conditions are:
o 0% slope
o 4 mph wind speed
o Dry fuel conditions (D2L2 moisture scenario after Andrews et al. 2005).
Using a dry fuel moisture scenario (D2L2), FCCS suggests crosswalks
from reported fuelbeds to the original 13 surface fire behavior fuel models
and the 40 standard fuel models (Scott and Burgan 2005).
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•
The FCCS webpage includes references in .pdf format for each of the
FCCS fuelbeds.
FCCS version 1.1 is currently available. FCCS v. 2.0 will be released by February 2008 and will allow users to
choose custom settings for environmental variables such as wind speed and moisture, in addition to other
enhancements such as a carbon report.
We feel FCCS (Ottmar et al. 2007, Riccardi et al. 2007) is the tool to use for this project and will provide
several advantages over other techniques. The FCCS fuelbeds include characteristics for all strata, category
and sub-category of fuels that have a potential to burn including the trees, snags, ladder fuels, shrubs,
nonwoody fuels, sound and rotten woody fuels, stumps, piles, litter/lichen/moss, and duff. Each strata,
category, and subcategory may be modified to (1) capture variability in fuels and (2) to create customized
fuelbed(s) particular to a stand, unit, forest, state, region, or any other scale of choice. This design can be
used to capture complexity and variability of fuels across time and space. For example, modification of
height, percentage cover, and density of trees (overstory, midstory, or understory) can be used to represent
the effects of a thinning operation on fuels. Changes to the values of the percentage live and live foliar
moisture in either the shrubs or nonwoody fuels can be used to represent a temporal change of season (i.e.,
growing vs. dormant). Many possibilities exist because every variable is changeable. Extensive, detailed
data within, and produced by FCCS can be used for fuels operation and management activities, fire science,
ecological analysis, and atmospheric science.
As mentioned above, the FCCS captures the structural complexity of the fuelbeds and calculates the fire hazard
potentials, flame length and rates of spread, and total carbon for each fuelbed. The fuelbed characteristics and
robust fire behavior equations enable the system to account for small changes in fire behavior as a result of
various fuelbed treatments and management scenarios. This is in contrast to the presently widely-used “fuel
models” (Anderson 1984, and Scott and Burgan 2005), which (1) compartmentalize fire behavior based on a
gross classification of surface fuels and thus do not allow for variability in fire behavior once the fuel model has
been chosen, and (2) do not by themselves include forest canopy fuels. The FCCS system currently houses 216
“stock” fuelbeds with an additional 240 being added that will represent eastern Washington and Oregon. For this
project, a set of customized fuelbeds can be developed using the FCCS that represent various pathways to
account for restoration projects, climate change, and fuel management. The fuelbed characteristics can then be
used to assess fire hazard, fire effects, smoke and pollutant production (using Consume 3.0), and carbon and
assist in directing the future of Angora post-fire treatment for incorporation into the EIS. The developed
fuelbeds and pathways will also constitute a large proportion of the common fuelbeds found in the Lake Tahoe
Basin, particularly on the west shore, and the proposed project will therefore generate many of the fuelbeds
necessary to carry out further such work elsewhere on the LTBMU.
To show how we can take advantage of FCCS and its fuelbeds, let’s assume we have a 400-acre Douglas-fir
(Psuedotsuga menziesii) and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forest near several summer homes that is
200 years old and has been protected from fire for the past 100 years (figure 1). Second, let’s assume this
stand will be thinned with a fuels treatment. We can build a fuelbed to represent each phase mentioned
customizing an FCCS fuelbed with onsite data and running it through the FCCS. The surface fire behavior
potential decreases from 6 to 2 after thinning and fuel treatment. Crown fire potential decreases from 5 to 1
because the removal of the midstory left a large gap between the overstory crown and the remaining
midstory trees. This lowered the potential of the surface flames reaching the crowns. The available fuel
decreased from 7 to 3 after the fuels treatment reduced the surface woody fuels, litter and duff.
Problem Statement: Develop a set of fuelbeds for the Angora Fire region to better plan the restoration projects
and communicate to managers, decision makers, and the public the levels of fire risk, smoke/pollutant
production, and threats or benefits to other resources of the various alternatives considered.
c. Goals, Objective, and Hypotheses to be Tested
In collaboration with U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region, the Fire and Environmental Research
Applications Team (FERA) of the Pacific Northwest Research Station will develop fuelbed pathways, determine
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a list of fuelbeds to be created, and construct fuelbeds using the FCCS that represent current and future fuel
matrixes within the post-fire Angora landscape. The FCCS will then provide fuelbed characteristics, a set of
surface fire behavior, crown fire, and available fuel potential predictions based on established environmental
criteria; and a carbon report for each fuelbed. Consume 3.0 will also be used to predict smoke and air pollutants
from each fuel bed under the same burning scenarios. These predictions will be made for the Angora Creek
watershed and the fire area based on a series of different alternatives provided by the fire restoration ID-Team.
Specific objectives of the project will include:
1) Develop fuelbed pathways that provide a list of current and future fuelbeds that could be found within
the Angora Creek watershed and within the perimeter of the Angora Fire.
2) Compare the fuelbed list with FCCS default fuelbeds and fuelbeds generated for the
Okanogan/Wenatchee National Forests project and Central Oregon Fire Planning Unit project to
determine which fuelbeds are already available.
3) Use the FCCS to construct any new fuelbeds required using previously collected data from the LTBMU
or other agencies; collect new data where necessary.
4) Work with the ID-team to determine the set of realistic alternative future vegetation states for the
watershed and the fire area and map pathways for fuel bed development.
5) For each alternative, follow hypothesized fuel bed pathways and run each fuelbed for fuelbed
characteristics, fire potentials, fire behavior prediction, and carbon values.
6) Use Consume 3.0 to generate predictions of smoke and air pollutant outputs.
7) Using existing vegetation layers and future predicted conditions (based on ID-team alternatives) to map
FCCS fuelbeds, fuelbed characteristics, fire potentials, surface fire behavior values, and carbon at
benchmark environmental conditions layers for the Angora Fire landscape.
8) Prepare and present one or more progress reports to Region 5 or other constituents.
9) Complete a final report with pathway diagrams and FCCS fuelbed files.
10) Prepare a draft manuscript(s) to be submitted to a refereed journal.
d. Approach, Methodology, and Location of Research
FERA will gather a team of fire ecologists and fire and fuel experts to develop a set of fuelbed pathways for the
post-fire Angora landscape. Pathways developed for eastern Washington and southeast Oregon will be used as a
template. Figures 2 and 3 are examples of fuelbed pathways and fuelbeds built for the Okanogan/Wenatchee
National Forest Project. Using local manager support and expert opinion, these pathways will be used to create a
list of fuelbeds to adequately identify the different fuel conditions that could occur over time within the Angora
watershed and the Angora wildfire perimeter for various fire severity conditions, management actions, and
climatic scenarios. The FCCS has recently been used to create 240 fuelbeds on the Okanogan/Wenatchee
National Forest and for the Central Oregon Fire Planning Unit project, areas with strong climatic and floristic
similarities to the Lake Tahoe Basin. We believe many of the existing fuelbeds can be used for the Angora
watershed as well, with minimum modification; our preliminary estimate is that up to 2/3 of the eastern Oregon
fuelbeds will have an analogue in the LTB.
The project team will determine the number of fuelbeds that (1) can be used directly from the
Okanogan/Wenatchee list, (2) will need to be modified, and (3) require creation. A 4-hour workshop will be
conducted with project team on how to use the FCCS. FERA will then gather local data, build the fuelbeds, and
use the project team to review and finalize. This process will provide fuelbeds to represent the vegetation types
within the Angora Creek watershed, including the Angora Fire perimeter. FCCS fire behavior outputs, including
fuel model crosswalks, FCCS surface fire, crown fire potentials, and fuel consumed potentials, along with total
carbon will be calculated for each fuelbed and transformed to GIS layers for mapping applications. The team
will work with the Angora Fire restoration ID-team to identify different alternatives for short- and long-term
vegetation management outcomes within the fire perimeter. For each alternative, fuel bed development
pathways will be constructed, based on knowledge of local successional patterns and modeling, where
necessary.
Specific methods will include:
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1) Build a series of fuelbed pathways that will spatially and temporally provide a list of fuelbeds that will
represent the Angora Fire under different restoration scenarios. The dry Douglas-fir/ponderosa pine
successional pathway developed for the Okanogan/Wenatchee National Forest is provided in figures 2 and 3
as an example (Objective 1).
2) Compare the fuelbed list with FCCS fuelbeds and custom fuelbeds built from the Okanogan/Wenatchee and
Central Oregon projects. Determine what fuelbeds can be used to represent the Angora Fire region
(Objectives 2-4) and which fuelbeds will need to be generated. Generate the group of FCCS customized
fuelbeds using an array of scientific and grey literature, available plot data, and as necessary, expert opinion
from the Angora fuelbed development team or field data collection. Fuelbeds will be given an overall rating
for the quality of the data used for creating the fuelbed. The rankings are as follows:
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1. No data (no hard numbers for any data value) - created from experience and/or ecological
literature
2. Partial data - less than 35% of modal inputs from literature, photo series, or peer-reviewed
data source
3. Partial data - 35-85% of modal inputs from literature, photo series, or peer reviewed data
source
4. Data driven - 85-100% of modal inputs from photo series or peer-reviewed data source
Data driven - 85-100% of all data (minimum, maximum, and modal) from photo series or peerreviewed data source
3) Create an output list for each final fuelbed using the FCCS and Consume 3.0 that will include the fuelbed
characteristics, surface fire behavior, crown fire, and available fire potential indices, surface fire behavior
values at benchmark conditions (i.e., flame length, rates of spread, reaction intensity), a cross walk from
each fuelbed to the original and standard fire behavior fuel models, fuel consumption, emissions production,
and a total carbon value. Fire behavior will be modeled at threshold environmental variables using 97th
percentile weather parameters (Objectives 5 and 6).
4) Using Angora Fire GIS vegetation layers, map FCCS fuelbeds, fuelbed characteristics, fire behavior outputs,
fire hazard potentials, smoke production, and carbon (Objective 7).
5) Prepare one or two presentations and present to LTBMU and other Region 5 staff members (Objective 8).
6) Complete a final report and submit it in manuscript form to a refereed journal (Objectives 9 and 10).
e. Strategy for Engaging with Managers
Co-PI is the Regional Ecologist for Region 5, the acting Province Ecologist for the IBET Province and an
adjunct member of the Angora Fire restoration ID-Team. The FERA team will work directly with the ID-Team
and the LTBMU vegetation and fuels management staff (and other agency staff) in developing and reviewing all
fuelbeds and fuelbed pathways. During the course of the propose project, selected staff from the LTBMU will
be trained in FCCS use. Long-term tutoring will be available for future use of FCCS via the Regional and
Province Ecologists. A presentation and final report will be delivered to the LTBMU, and a scientific
manuscript will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
f. Deliverables/Products
This project will deliver a set of fuelbed pathways and fuelbeds and the resulting fire potential hazards
that will represent the Angora Fire region. The deliverables will include:
1. A comprehensive set of fuelbed pathways for the Angora Creek watershed, including the Angora Fire
landscape.
2. FCCS fuelbeds that represent current and future scenarios for the Angora Fire region.
3. GIS map layers of FCCS fuelbeds, fuelbed characteristics (e.g., loading, surface fuel depth, canopy
cover, etc), and potential fire behavior outputs.
4. Presentation to Region 5 managers and other constituents.
5. Final report describing the protocols and FCCS fuelbeds with corresponding fire behavior output.
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6. Scientific manuscript draft.
7. Quarterly progress reports and invoicing
8.
g. Scheduling of Milestones/Deliverables (including Quarterly Reports and Invoicing)
The project duration will be 1.5 calendar years, 06/01/08 to 12/31/09 (Table 1). Invoices will be submitted
through the U.S. Forest Service National Finance System. Their invoicing process are automatic and the
schedule is unknown by principal investigators.
Literature Cited
Anderson, H.E. 1984 Anderson, H.E. 1982. Aids to determining fuel models for estimating fire behavior.
General Technical Report, GTR-INT-122. USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment
Station. Ogden, Utah.
Andrews, P.L.; Bevins, C.D.; Seli, R.C. 2005. BehavePlus fire modeling system, version 3.0: User's Guide. Gen.
Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-106 Revised. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Forest Service, Rocky
Mountain Research Station.132 p.
Ottmar, R.D., Sandberg, D.V.; Riccardi, C.L.; Prichard, S. J. 2007. An overview of the fuel characteristic
classification System (FCCS) - quantifying, classifying, and creating fuelbeds for resource planning. Can. J.
For. Res. In press.
Riccardi, C. L., Ottmar, R. D., Sandberg, D.V., Andreu, A., Elman, E., Kopper, K., Long, J. 2007. The fuelbed:
a key element of the fuel characteristic classification system. Can. J. For. Res. In press.
Scott, J. H., Burgan, R. E. 2005. Standard fire behavior fuel models: a comprehensive set for use with
Rothermel's surface fire spread model. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-153. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department
of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 72 p.
Table 1. Milestones.
Task/Milestone
Kickoff meeting
Build fuelbed pathways, create fuelbed list
Compare with currently available fuelbeds
Begin constructing FCCS fuelbeds
Quarterly progress report
Fuelbed construction complete
Quarterly report
Draft presentation to Region 5 Office
Present objectives and progress report to Region 5 and other constituents
Complete GIS/SRS FCCS fuelbed and output map
Quarterly report
Complete final report
Quarterly report
Present final report to R5 and other constituents
Complete a minimum of 1 refereed journal draft report
Timeline
June 1, 2008
August 1, 2008
August 15, 2008
August 15, 2008
September 1, 2008
December 1, 2008
December 1, 2009
December 15, 2008
January 15, 2009
March 1, 2009
March 1, 2009
September 1, 2009
September 1, 2009
October 30, 2009
December 31, 2009
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III. Figures
Figure 1. The
forested area
of the Lassen
National
Forest has
been thinned
and the fuels
treated,
resulting in
reduced FCCS
surface fire,
crown fire,
and available
fuel potentials.
(Photos
courtesy of the
Eagle Lake
Ranger
District,
Lassen
National
FCCS Fire Potential:
657
FCCS Fire Potential:
213
Potential Dry Douglas-fir, Ponderosa Pine, Grand Fir Fuelbed Series Pathway
OW009
OW018
none
OW023
Select
cut & Rx
burn
OW024
&
OW017
no
n
Rx
OW003
none
OW010
OW008
PCT &
Rx burn
PCT & no treat
none
PC
T
n
no
OW002
none
OW011
OW014
cc 1
OW016
OW019
&
e
Rx
bu
PCT & Rx
burn
OW022
S
& elec
Rx t
bu cut
rn
OW028
e
non
OW027
OW020
rn
OW015
Bug
OW021
OW029
OW031
none
OW030
none
OW032
Se
le
Rx ct cu
bu t &
rn
ut
tc
lec at
Se o tre
+n
OW004
none
bu
rn
none
none
no
ne
none
PC
T
Se
lec
Rx t cut
&
bu
rn
OW07
e
none
t
cu
ct t
le rea
Se o t
+n
Clearcut, no slash trt
Fire, no salvage
g
Bu
OW001
Select
cut & Rx
burn
t
cu t
ct a
le tre
Se no
&
Se
le
Rx ct c
bu ut &
rn
t
OW012
&
T urn
PC X b
R
none
150+
80-150
OW013
&
t cut
Selec rn
Rx bu
OW006
none
40-80
Select cu
t
& Rx burn
none
PCT & Rx
burn
Age
Se
lec
no t cut
tre
at &
OW025
None
OW005
25-40
15-25
ne
no
Figure 2.
Example of
a fuelbed
pathway
diagram.
This is a
similar
approach to
that which
will be used
to determine
one set of
fuelbeds that
will
represent the
current and
future
Angora Fire
landscape.
Fire, salvage/clearcut, burn
0-15
OW026
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Douglas-fir, Ponderosa Pine, Grand Fir Fuelbed Series
OW001
dry df/pp 10-15yr wildfire no salv-shrub
OW002
dry df/pp 10-15yr clearcut harvest no trt-shrub
OW003
dry df/pp 10-15yr wildfire no salv-herb
OW004
dry df/pp 10-15yr clearcut harvest no trt-herb
OW005
dry df/pp 10-15yr wildfire & salvage, clearcut/burn-shrub
OW006
dry df/pp 10-15yr wildfire & salvage, clearcut/burn-herb
OW007
dry df/pp/gf 15-25yr after wildfire no salv lo density, no change agent
OW008
dry df/pp/gf 15-25yr after regen harvest no trtmt, lo density no change agent
OW009
Dry df/pp/gf 15-25yr after wildfire-salvage or clearcut-burn, shrub, no change agent
OW010
dry df/pp/gf 15-25yr after wildfire no salv, hi density no change agent
OW011
dry df/pp/gf 15-25yr after regen harvest no trt, hi density no change agent
OW012
Dry df/pp/gf 15-25yr after wildfire-salvage or clearcut-burn, herb, no change agent
OW013
dry df/pp/gf 25-40yr after wildfire-salvage or clearcut-burn, shrub, pct-treat or Rx burn
OW014
dry df/pp/gf 25-40yr after wildfire no salv, pct-treat or Rx burn
OW015
dry df/pp/gf 25-40yr after regen harvest no trt pct-treat or Rx burn
OW016
dry df/pp/gf 25-40yr after wildfire no salv, pct-no treat
OW017
dry df/pp/gf 25-40yr after wildfire no salv, none
OW018
dry df/pp/gf 25-40yr after wildfire-salvage or clearcut-burn, herb, no change agent
OW019
dry df/pp/gf 25-40yr after regen harvest no trtmt, no change agent
OW020
dry df/pp/gf 40-80yr Select Cut & Rx Burn
OW021
dry df/pp/gf 40-80yr Select Cut & No treat
OW022
dry df/pp/gf 40-80yr after wildfire no salv, none
OW023
dry df/pp/gf 40-80yr, none
OW024
dry df/pp/gf 80-150yr select cut, Rx burn
OW025
dry df/pp/gf 80-150yr select cut, Rx burn
OW026
dry df/pp/gf 80-150yr select cut, no treat
OW027
dry df/pp/gf 80-150yr none
OW028
dry df/pp/gf 80-150yr after wildfire no salv, insects & disease
OW029
dry df/pp/gf 150+yr select cut-burn
OW030
dry df/pp/gf 40-80yr after wildfire no salv, no treat
OW031
dry df/pp/gf 150+yr select cut, no treat
OW032
dry df/pp/gf 150+yr low load, none
Figure 3. Example of a set of fuelbeds determined from the fuelbed pathways (fig. 2) that will
be built using the FCCS.
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