ArcFuels: An ArcGIS Interface for Fuel Treatment Planning and Wildfire Risk Assessment
Alan Ager
Operations Research Analyst,
Western Wildland Environmental
Threat Assessment Center (WWETAC)
Prineville, Oregon
aager[at]fs.fed.us
(541) 969-8683
Nicole Vaillant
Fire Ecologist,
Western Wildland Environmental
Threat Assessment Center (WWETAC)
Prineville, Oregon
nvaillant[at]fs.fed.us
(541) 233-6107
John Anderson
Lead programmer
BalanceTech, LLC
534 Fairview Avenue,
Missoula, MT 59801
ArcFuels Overview
Wildland fire risk assessment and fuel management planning on federal lands in the U.S. is a complex problem that often requires advanced fire behavior modeling and intensive spatial data analyses. Both the benefits and potential impacts of proposed fuel treatments must be clearly demonstrated in the context of land management goals and public expectations. Potential fire behavior metrics, including fire spread, intensity, likelihood, and ecological risk need to be analyzed for proposed fuel treatment alternatives.
We built ArcFuels to streamline the fuel management planning process, and provide tools for quantitative wildfire risk assessment. ArcFuels integrated a number of fire behavior models and corporate spatial data within a GIS framework. The system vastly simplifies spatial data manipulations and wildfire behavior analyses for design and testing fuel treatment alternatives.
Specifically, ArcFuels integrates or leverag
es the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) with the Fire and Fuels Extension (FFE-FVS) to model forest growth at the stand-level and landscape-level using the GIS framework. The Stand Visualization System (SVS) is used to visualize forest growth. ArcFuels creates input files for NEXUS, FARSITE, and FlamMap for fire behavior modeling outside of the interface and incorporates BehavePlus within the system.
ArcFuels User Webpage
Please visit the ArcFuels user page for program download, user guide and tutorial, useful links and more information about ArcFuels.
ArcFuels Citation
Ager, A.A., Vaillant, N.M., and Finney, M.A. 2011. Integrating Fire Behavior Models and Geospatial Analysis for Wildland Fire Risk Assessment and Fuel Management Planning. Journal of Combustion, vol. 2011, Article ID 572452, 19 pages. (PDF, 2.9 MB)
