Adaptive Management Services

Projects

Rapid Response Fire Project 2002

Methods

For each fire event, we will: 1) rapidly obtain vegetation management history information; 2) obtain pre-fire aerial photography; 3) collect pre-fire fuels condition data ahead of the fire; 4) measure fire behavior through sites where we have measured fuels; and 5) measure some immediate post-fire effects and indirect measures of fire behavior. We will capture and record all weather, fire behavior, topography, fuels, fire suppression actions and other pertinent information providing an overall context for the pattern of the fire.

Selection of Fires

Our plan is to sample 3 locations on 1 to 3 fires. We will select fires that are expected to last at least 5 days in duration. In the first year all of the fires will be in California, since most of the funding is from here.

Fire Behavior Measurements

Our primary fire behavior measurements will be rate of spread, flamelength, and residence time. Direct measurements of fire behavior and associated weather at each measurement site will be made with video cameras, data loggers, thermocouples, heat flux sensors, and RAWS weather stations.

At each fire behavior measurement site we will have a minimum of 2 color video cameras (3ccd), housed in fire-resistant cases (Kautz 1997). One will be placed to face the head of the fire and the second will be placed perpendicular to the expected flaming front. In the vicinity of the video camera pairs, we will place a RAWS weather station and a fire-activated thermologger.

In addition to direct measurement and observation as safe, we will utilize any other ancillary sources of fire behavior information such as Infrared Fire Activity photography. We will prepare our own fire progression map for sampled areas using field observations, infrared mapping, and fire mapping by the IMT. We will use these to make more coarse-scale estimates of rates of spread for different fronts of the fire in the vicinity of treatment areas and in general. Detailed records from the incident meteorologist (IMET) or FBAN on general weather patterns and local weather conditions will be gathered.

Fuels Measurements

For pre-fire fuel conditions, we will apply the strategy of Omi (1999), measuring conditions in the stand of vegetation where the fire will first hit preceding the treated area, the conditions in the treated area, and the conditions in the stand of vegetation where the fire will likely spread after going through the treated area. We refer to each of these three locations as measurement sites in the discussion that follows. We will employ two basic types of fuel condition observations and measurements: rapid plots and detailed plots.

The rapid plots will be distributed transects or systematic grid throughout the area marked with rebar and mapped with GPS.  At the rapid plots, we will take digital photographs in cardinal directions from fixed heights, measure canopy cover with a moosehorn apparatus, and take duff, litter and fuelbed depths, and record the most appropriate standard fuel model type. Our target number of rapid plots for each measurement site is 18.

The detailed plots will be placed at several locations along a randomly placed transect throughout each measurement site. Each plot center will be marked with rebar and the location recorded with GPS units. We will measure and quantify surface and ground fuels, live fuels and fuel moisture. At each of these plots, we will measure surface fuel loadings and configurations using Brown’s planar intercepts (Brown 1974). We will also measure understory cover, tree density and crown characteristics (Brown et al. 1982). We will utilize relative-area plots, rather than fixed-area plots to speed the installation of the tree portions. For each tree, we will directly measure height to live crown and total tree height with a laser device.