What is ArcFuels?

ArcFuels is an ArcMap toolbar developed to streamline fire behavior modeling and spatial analyses for fuel treatment planning. The toolbar links: 1) key wildfire behavior models; 2) fuels and vegetation data (e.g., LANDFIRE, FVS databases); 3) MS Office, and 4) ArcGIS.

ArcFuels is used to rapidly design and test fuel treatments at the stand and landscape scale via linkages to models such as FVS-FFE (Forest Vegetation Simulator with the Fire and Fuels Extension), SVS (Stand Visualization System), FARSITE (Fire Area Simulator), FlamMap, Nexus, and the Landscape Treatment Designer. The system was specifically designed to accelerate Fireshed/SPOTS analyses for fuel treatment planning. The ArcMap framework helps specialists leverage local data to address project-specific issues that typify many fuel treatment projects.

Specific functionality of ArcFuels includes: (1) An interactive linkage between digital imager, vegetation, data, FVS-FFE, and SVS, providing a map-based tool for designing, simulating, and visualizing stand fuel treatments, (2) Rapid scale-up of stand-specific treatments to simulate landscape packages of treatment alternatives, (3) Data linkages between FVS outputs and FlamMap to allow for simulation of landscape-scale fire behavior and evaluation of fuel treatment scenarios, and (4) full GIS functionality provided with ArcMap for data manipulation, ancillary analyses, mapping, and other GIS functionality.