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Type: Journal Article
Author(s): Joint Fire Science Program
Contributor(s): Alan A. Ager
Publication Date: 2009

That risk from wildfire continues to grow across the United States is not a new problem. Managing forest fuels in the real world-such as thinning and burning prescriptively-to reduce fuel loads have been used effectively to reduce the risk of severe wildfire. These actions have been helped by a variety of software tools that assist managers in planning and evaluating fuel treatments to ensure they are cost effective in terms of impeding the growth of future large, severe wildfires. While many landscape planning tools do a fine job within the scope of their capabilities, the process of fine tuning fuel management plans requires that users interact with large cumbersome databases and complex wildfire behavior models. The streamlined approach for modeling wildfire and planning fuel treatments on large landscapes developed in this study integrates fire behavior modeling and data processing tasks into a framework. This framework provides rapid assessment of wildfire risk and the potential effects of fuel management activities. The total picture of a particular scenario includes not only the predicted change in fire behavior, but also the change in likelihood of a fire, and resulting change in specific highly valued resources. Read further to learn about ArcFuels. This brief includes a Manager's Viewpoint by Paige Houston. Contributing scientists are Alan A. Ager.

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Link to this document (719 KB; pdf)
Citation: Joint Fire Science Program. 2009. ArcFuels: integrating wildfire models and risk analysis into landscape fuels management. JFSP Fire Science Brief. February 2009(43):1-11.

Cataloging Information

Topics:
Fire Behavior    Fuels    Hazard and Risk    Mapping    Models    Planning
Regions:
Alaska    California    Eastern    Great Basin    Hawaii    Northern Rockies    Northwest    Rocky Mountain    Southern    Southwest    National
Keywords:
  • ArcFuels
  • fuels management
  • GIS - geographic information system
  • landscape planning
  • modeling framework
JFSP Project Number(s):
  • 03-4-1-04
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 7927