Why is FCCS needed?
For
most of the twentieth century, fuels were characterized and modeled
primarily to
predict fire behavior (including rate of spread, resistance to control,
and
flame length in surface fuels).
Although they remain useful to fire managers, current fire
behavior fuel
models do not accurately describe the actual variability of fuels found
in
nature. The
FCCS was developed to:
- Provide fuel managers with
a national system to characterize and classify
realistic fuelbeds.
- Allow users to create and
store custom fuelbeds for their specific applications.
- Generate numerical inputs
to fire behavior, fire effects, and dynamic vegetation
models (examples depicted below).
- Assist other potential users
(i.e., landscape ecologists, forest ecologists,
wildlife biologists, air quality managers, carbon balance modelers)
with a tool to reference and develop fuelbeds and communicate fire
hazard for a wide array of fuel environments throughout North America.
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