Mapping Wildland Fire Potential for the Conterminous United States

This project mapped wildland fire potential (WFP) for the conterminous United States by combining national spatial layers that delineate fire behavior and fire probability under extreme conditions. Fire behavior includes both crown fire potential and surface fire potential. Crown fire potential was based on assigning relative classes (very low – extreme) to forest cover types and range cover type layers. The forest cover types layer were developed by Forest Inventory & Analysis program (USFS) and the Remote Sensing Application Center (USFS) from MODIS. The range cover type layers were developed as part of the Coarse Scale project by the Fire Modeling Institute (FMI), Missoula Fire Science Laboratory (MFSL). Surface fire potential was also based assigning relative classes to surface fire potential rate of spread and flame length, which were developed as part the Fuels Characteristic Classification project out of the Pacific Northwest Research Station. Fire probability was represented by both fire weather and fire occurrence. Fire weather includes problem fire days and length of fire seasons. Problem fire days was based on average number of days a year that experience extreme fire weather based on thresholds of temperature, wind, and humidity from 1982 to 1997. Fire seasons is based on the average number of days per year relative energy release component (RERC) is above 95 percent based on daily RERC maps from 1980 to 2005. Fire occurrence is based on small fires and largest occurrence. Small fires were defined as any fire greater then a tenth acre and large fires were any fire greater then 500 acres from 1980 to 2003. This paper will review the methods to develop the WFP, and make recommendation for improving the process of mapping WFP.