Description

The Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) has been under development by the Canadian Forest Service since 1968, and comprises two major subsystems: the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) and the Canadian Forest Fire Behavior Prediction (FBP) Systems (Stocks et al. 1989, Taylor and Alexander 2006). In Canada the FWI System has been used since 1970; this empirical system is comprised of six standard components (Van Wagner 1987) that provide numerical ratings of relative fire potential for a standard fuel type on level terrain that are derived from weather observations (Van Nest and Alexander 1999). The first three components of the FWI System are fuel moisture codes that track changes in the daily moisture content of three classes of fuel (Fine Fuel Moisture Code=FFMC, Duff Moisture Code=DMC, and Drought Code=DC), each with different rates of drying (Van Wagner 1987) . The remaining three components of the FWI System are indices of fire behavior that represent the rate of spread (Initial Spread Index=ISI), amount of fuel weight (Buildup Index=BUI), and fire intensity (Fire Weather Index=FWI) (Van Wagner 1987, Stocks et al. 1989). The slideshow for this project was presented at the 2014 Spring Alaska Fire Science Workshop.