Hazardous Fuels and Vegetation Treatment Processes and Tools
Under Development by R5, PNW Research Station and RM Research Station
OUTLINE FOR DOCUMENTATION OF MODELS/TOOLS
1. Tool Name: Mapping FCCS Fuelbeds
2. Brief Description of Tool: Rule sets and knowledge base for associating
FCCS fuelbeds with spatial location. Used for modeling consumption and
emissions from prescribed and wildland fires.
3. Scale Tool is Applicable: Applicable at any spatial scale/resolution up to 1 km
for which adequate vegetation and environmental data exist. Useful for
regional-scale modeling of air quality (coarse scale) or for modeling fire
hazard, fire potentials, and fire effects at stand, landscape, or forest/district
scale.
4. Analyst Requirement: GIS analyst, database manager/programmer,
landscape ecologist, and fuels scientists. At the Forest or District level, input is
needed from local managers. At coarse scales, input needed from modelers.
5. Data Inputs: Remotely sensed imagery, GIS layers for vegetation, potential
vegetation or biophysical setting, and land use. Also requires the definition of
FCCS fuelbeds associated with each portion of the landscape to be mapped.
6. Model Outputs: Mapped layers of FCCS fuelbeds at any scale from the
treatment to the landscape or continental, from natural or management
treatments.
7. Application of Model for Fuel Treatment Work: Characterization and
quantification (through links to the FCCS system) of landscapes for the purpose
of assessing the effects of fuel treatments, e.g., a spatial layer of fuel loadings
and or FCCS fire potentials before and after the implementation of a fuel
treatment.
8. Linkage to Other Models/Tools: Used in conjunction with the FCCS system,
CONSUME and FEPS, vegetation succession models (e.g., VDDT, FVS), fireeffects tradeoff models, the Landscape Management System (LMS), or any other
tool that requires/accepts spatial data layers of fuels.
9. Partners: Can best be accomplished through active partnership among FCCS
Development Team, other PNW Station scientists, and Forest/District Fire
Management.
10. Current Status: Applied at coarse scale (1-km) across the western USA. Will
require a 15-month partnership to provide initial application at regional scale
(PNW forests and districts).
11. Training Availability: Will follow first-year test application.
12. Tool Contact: Don McKenzie; donaldmckenzie@fs.fed.us; (phone) 206-7327824
13. Example of Model/Tool Application: See attached example.
Mapping fuels using the FCCS system
Hazardous fuel and vegetation treatment workshop
May 17-18, 2004
Bend, OR
Don McKenzie, Sam Sandberg, Roger Ottmar
The FCCS fuelbeds are scale-independent in that they can be linked to vegetation layers
with variable grain and extent. The choice of scale depends on the application (e.g., airquality modeling, prescribed burning) and the extent and resolution of vegetation and
environmental data.
Coarse-scale mapping, for the purpose of regional modeling, has been applied at 1-km
resolution (see example slide). FCCS fuelbeds are keyed to vegetation layers classified
from satellite imagery, and climatological and biophysical layers and the potential natural
vegetation derived from them (McKenzie et al. 2004).
Fine-scale mapping, at the extent of a region, forest, or district, depends on vegetation
layers with finer resolution than 1 km, for example, the vegetation cover and structural
stage from the ICRB midscale assessment. Mapping at finer scales permits ground-based
validation of fuel loadings, and is applicable to management objectives such as firehazard reduction and restoration of fire regimes. At these scales, spatially explicit links
can be made between FCCS and modeling paradigms such as the Gradient Nearest
Neighbor method (GNN).
At the finest scales, for example prescribed burns or other management units, FCCS
fuelbeds can be applied by local managers on a case-by-case basis, or linked to spatial
configurations of vegetation derived from aerial photos or field data collection.
Citation
McKenzie, D., K.E. Kopper, and A.C. Bayard. 2004. A rule-based classification for
landscape modeling of fuel succession. Proceedings of the 2003 Sydney (Australia) fire
conference. Available at:
http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/fera/nfp/haze/mckenzie-etal-fuel-mapping.pdf