%0 Journal Article
%T Integrating Fire Behavior Models and Geospatial Analysis for Wildland Fire Risk Assessment and Fuel Management Planning
%A Alan A. Ager
%A Nicole M. Vaillant
%A Mark A. Finney
%J Journal of Combustion
%D 2011
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2011/572452
%X Wildland fire risk assessment and fuel management planning on federal lands in the US are complex problems that require state-of-the-art fire behavior modeling and intensive geospatial analyses. Fuel management is a particularly complicated process where the benefits and potential impacts of fuel treatments must be demonstrated in the context of land management goals and public expectations. A number of fire behavior metrics, including fire spread, intensity, likelihood, and ecological risk must be analyzed for multiple treatment alternatives. The effect of treatments on wildfire impacts must be considered at multiple scales. The process is complicated by the lack of data integration among fire behavior models, and weak linkages to geographic information systems, corporate data, and desktop office software. This paper describes our efforts to build a streamlined fuel management planning and risk assessment framework, and an integrated system of tools for designing and testing fuel treatment programs on fire-prone wildlands. 1. Introduction Wildland fire risk assessment and fuel management activities have become a major activity in the Forest Service as part of efforts to reduce the growing financial and ecological losses from catastrophic wildfires [1¨C4]. For instance, between 2004 and 2008, 44,000 fuel treatments were implemented across the western US as part of the National Fire Plan [5], with a large proportion of these on national forest land. The importance of fire risk assessments and fuel management will continue with urban expansion into the wildlands and climate-change effects on fire frequency [6, 7]. Fuel treatment activities encompass a wide range of operational methods including thinning (removal of small trees), mechanical treatment of fuel (i.e., mastication, grinding of surface and ladder fuels), and underburning to reduce both surface and canopy fuel to ultimately reduce the frequency of uncharacteristic wildfires [8]. The goal for specific fuel treatment projects vary widely depending on ecological conditions with respect to natural fire regimes and the spatial pattern of values deemed at risk. For instance, some treatments are designed as localized fuel breaks to minimize fire occurrence within highly valued social and ecological values [9] while others are designed to impede the spread of fire over large landscapes [10]. Both wildfire risk assessment and designing fuel management projects are difficult problems, especially on federal land where planners are required to follow complex planning processes while addressing multiple land
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jc/2011/572452/