A Fire Severity Mapping System for Real-Time Fire Management Applications and Long-Term Planning: The FIRESEV project

Accurate, consistent, and timely fire severity maps are needed in all phases of fire management including planning, managing, and rehabilitating wildfires. The problem is that fire severity maps are commonly developed from satellite imagery that is difficult to use for planning wildfire responses before a fire has actually happened and can’t be used for real-time wildfire management because of the timing of the imagery delivery. Moreover, imagery is difficult to use for controlled fires such as prescribed burning. This study, called FIRESEV (FIRE SEVerity Mapping Tools) created a comprehensive set of tools and protocols to deliver, create, and evaluate fire severity maps for all phases of fire management. The first tool is a Severe Fire Potential Map (SFPM) that quantifies the potential for fires to burn with high severity, should they occur, for any 30m x 30m piece of ground across the western United States. This map was developed using empirical models that related topographic, vegetation, and fire weather variables to burn severity as mapped using the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) digital products. This SFPM map is currently available on the Fire Research and Management Exchange System (FRAMES, http://www.frames.gov/firesev) web site and can be used to plan for future wildfires or for managing wildfires in real time, e.g. by including it as a layer in Wildland Fire Decision Support System or other GIS analysis. The next tool was the inclusion of a fire severity mapping algorithm in the Wildland Fire Assessment Tool (WFAT) developed by the National Interagency Fuels Technology Transfer (NIFTT) team. WFAT is used for fuel treatment planning to predict potential fire effects under prescribed fire weather conditions (http://www.frames.gov/partner-sites/niftt/tools/niftt-current-resources/). Now, fire severity can be mapped explicitly from fire effects simulation models (FOFEM, Consume) for real-time and planning wildfire applications. Next, the FIRESEV project showed how results from the WFAT simulated fire severity can be integrated with satellite imagery to improve fire severity mapping. And last, the FIRESEV project produced a suite of research studies, synthesis papers, and popular articles designed to improve the description, interpretation, and mapping of fire severity for wildland fire management: (1) a research study created a completely objective method of quantifying fire severity from fire effects to obtain nine unique classes of fire severity, (2) a research study comprehensively contrasted all current classifications of fire severity using Composite Burn Index (CBI) as measured on over 300 plots across the western United States to determine commonalities and differences, and (3) a synthesis paper was written discussing the problems involved in measuring, describing, and quantifying fire severity. This FIRESEV project yielded over 15 deliverables that we feel provides a comprehensive suite of products to create useful fire severity maps, along with current satellite imagery products, and also FIRESEV provides a thorough background on how to measure, interpret, and apply fire severity in fire management

Burn Severity Mapping Using Simulation Modeling and Satellite Imagery

As wildfires becomes an increasingly important issue affecting our nation’s landscapes, fire managers must quickly assess possible adverse fire effects to efficiently allocate resources for rehabilitation or remediation. While burn severity maps derived from satellite imagery can provide a landscape view of relative fire impacts, fire effects simulation models can also provide spatial fire severity estimates along with the biotic context in which to interpret severity. In this project, we evaluated two methods of mapping burn severity for four wildfires in western Montana using 64 plots as field reference: 1) an image-based burn severity mapping approach using the Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (ΔNBR), and 2) a fire effects simulation approach using the FIREHARM model. We compared the ability of these two approaches to estimate field-measured fire effects and found that the image-based approach was moderately correlated to percent tree mortality (r = 0.53) but had no relationship with percent fuel consumption (r = - 0.04). The FIREHARM model was moderately correlated with percent fuel consumption (0.33) and weakly correlated with percent tree mortality (r = 0.18). Burn severity maps produced by the two approaches were quite variable with map agreement ranging from 33.5% and 64.8% for the four sampled wildfires. Both approaches had the same overall map accuracies when compared to a sampled composite burn index (57.8%). Though there are limitations to both approaches, we believe these techniques could be used synergistically to improve burn severity mapping capabilities of land managers, enabling them to meet rehabilitation objectives quickly and effectively

Evaluation of the CONSUME and FOFEM fuel consumption models in pine and mixed hardwood forests of the eastern United States

Reliable predictions of fuel consumption are critical in the eastern United States (US), where prescribed burning is frequently applied to forests and air quality is of increasing concern. CONSUME and the First Order Fire Effects Model (FOFEM), predictive models developed to estimate fuel consumption and emissions from wildland fires, have not been systematically evaluated for application in the eastern US using the same validation data set. In this study, we compiled a fuel consumption data set from 54 operational prescribed fires (43 pine and 11 mixed hardwood sites) to assess each model’s uncertainties and application limits. Regions of indifference between measured and predicted values by fuel category and forest type represent the potential error that modelers could incur in estimating fuel consumption by category. Overall, FOFEM predictions have narrower regions of indifference than CONSUME and suggest better correspondence between measured and predicted consumption. However, both models offer relia..., Des prédictions fiables de consommation des combustibles sont essentielles dans l’est des États-Unis (É.-U.) où le brûlage dirigé est souvent utilisé en forêt et où la qualité de l’air est une préoccupation croissante. Les modèles de prédiction CONSUME et FOFEM ont été conçus pour estimer la consommation des combustibles et les émissions associées aux feux de forêt, mais ils n’ont pas été systématiquement évalués pour être appliqués dans l’est des É.-U. en utilisant le même ensemble de données de validation. Dans cette étude, nous avons compilé un ensemble de données de consommation de combustibles à partir de 54 brûlages dirigés opérationnels (43 pinèdes et 11 stations de forêt feuillue mélangée) pour estimer l’incertitude associée à chaque modèle et leurs limites d’application. Les zones d’indifférence entre les valeurs mesurées et prédites par catégorie de combustibles et par type forestier représentent l’erreur potentielle que les modèles pourraient engendrer en estimant la consommation de combustible..