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Document

Type: Book Chapter
Author(s): Jan W. van Wagtendonk
Publication Date: 1996

Fuel treatments are necessary in many vegetated areas of the Sierra Nevada to mitigate the effects of decades of fire suppression and land-management activities on fuel accumulations and understory canopies. Treating fuels will reduce the severity of wildfires and, as a result, the threat to human lives, the destruction of property and valuable resources, and the alteration of natural fire regimes. This chapter describes the use of a deterministic fire-modeling approach to obtain information about the relative effectiveness of fuel treatments, including fuel breaks, prescribed burning, biomassing, piling and burning, and cutting and scattering. Wildfire spread was simulated under idealized conditions to see how specific fuel and stand treatments affect fire behavior. It was obvious from the simulations that fuel breaks alone do not halt the spread of wildfire. Prescribed burning appears to be the most effective treatment for reducing a fire's rate of spread, fireline intensity, flame length, and heat per unit of area. A management scheme that includes a combination of fuel treatments in conjunction with other land-management scenarios should be successful in reducing the size and intensity of wildfires.

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Link to this document (765 KB; pdf)
Citation: Van Wagtendonk, J.W. 1996. Use of a deterministic fire growth model to test fuel treatments. Chapter 43 (pages 1155-1166) in: Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: Final Report to Congress, vol. II, Assessments and Scientific Basis for Management Options. Davis, CA: University of California, Centers for Water and Wildland Resources.

Cataloging Information

Topics:
Fire Behavior    Fuels    Hazard and Risk    Mapping    Models    Planning    Prescribed Fire    Weather
Regions:
Keywords:
  • FARSITE - Fire Area Simulator
  • fire growth model
  • fuel treatments
  • Sierra Nevada
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 816