Welcome to Part 2 of the Wildland Fire Assessment Tool lesson: - - PDF document

Welcome to Part 2 of the Wildland Fire Assessment Tool lesson: Applications. 1

In Part 1, you were introduced to the Wildland Fire Assessment , y

• Tool. To review, WFAT integrates FOFEM and FlamMap with

ArcGIS to provide spatial fire behavior and first order fire effects

• utputs. In this Part 2 presentation, you will learn more about

various applications of the FOFEM Mapping Tool that can help you in your fire planning efforts. 2

We’ll consider six general applications of WFAT as a planning tool, and provide some examples of specific tool outputs. 3

WFAT can be used to understand the location of potentially hazardous fuels. Using a variety of weather and fuel conditions you can map the potential fire behavior and effects. This example shows flame lengths near Wallace, ID under two different wind conditions. Hazardous fuels are those that may generate undesirable impacts th f it I thi th d i bl i t i

• n the resources of a site. In this case the undesirable impact is

high flame lengths. Other undesirable impacts that can be mapped using WFAT will be discussed in the following slides as we talk about the other applications of WFAT 4

Fuel treatment projects require extensive monetary, time, and personnel resources, but are an essential part of land management. It is therefore important to understand where fuel treatment projects are most needed and influential, how to reduce the fuel to most efficiently accomplish objectives, and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the fuel reduction project. By creating grids that include the outcomes of various treatment scenarios (ex. Reduced canopy base height-CBH, or changed fuel model etc) and entering those grids into WFAT you will be able to produce fire behavior and fire effects outputs under each of the specified conditions. When completed you will be able to compare the WFAT outputs and evaluate which input conditions created the p p most desirable outputs. This will save time and money by refining the fuel treatment strategy before resources are deployed on the ground. 5

For example, after a fuel treatment prescription is developed, many

• f the tool outputs can be used to address the question “Under

what fuel moisture and weather conditions will a burn result in desired fire effects or controllable fire behavior?” After a fuel treatment prescription is developed, WFAT can also be used to address the question “Will the fuel treatment prescriptions actually result in the desired fire effects and/or fire behavior characteristics? S f th t t d i h l i i ht i l d f Some of the outputs used in such an analysis might include surface fuel consumption, coarse woody debris consumption, or percent mineral soil exposed, as shown here. 6

In this example, we will look at how you can use the WFAT to predict potential woody fuel reduction in a planned prescribed

• burn. On the slide you see preburn map layers showing 1-hour,

10-hour, and 100-hour fuel class loadings. 7

Here are the predicted loadings for these same fuel classes after modeling a fall prescribed burn with WFAT

Using the Raster Calculator in ArcMap, you can calculate the percent potential reduction for each of these size classes across the planned burn area as shown on the slide. In this example, the 1-hour fuel loading was reduced by 100%, the 10-hour loading was reduced by 79% on average, and the 100-hour loading was reduced by an average of 60%. In addition, the spatial nature of WFAT allows you to see which individual pixels met or exceeded the targeted d ti t reduction percentage.

WFAT can also be used to develop burn plans for prescribed fire. One of the purposes of a burn plan is to present the conditions under which the prescribed fire will take place. These conditions are based on the desired effects of the prescribed fire. In order to which conditions will create which effects, different whether and fuel scenarios can be entered into WFAT and the potential outcomes

• f those conditions will be represented in the fire behavior and fire

ff t t t id U i i t f t ti l th d f l effects output grids. Using a variety of potential weather and fuel scenarios, combined with local knowledge will help create an accurate and supported burn plan with optimal conditions for reaching the objectives of the prescribed burn. 10

This slide shows a PM2.5 emissions map layer simulated with WFAT under low fuel moisture values in summer. PM2.5 is a small diameter pollutant found in wild and prescribed fire smoke. It can cause serious health problems, particularly to the very young, old, and those with heart and lung conditions, and so it is regulated by the EPA. The amount of pollutant produced by a fire is determined by the length of the flaming and smoldering y g g g combustion phases, by fuel moisture, and by fuel size and

• arrangement. The mapping tool allows users to adjust input

conditions, such as the fuel moisture value and time of year, and gives users a visual estimate of the potential amount of PM2.5 that could be produced during a fire under different conditions. By using a high-population density overlay, as shown in pink on the lid h k i f d d i i b h slide here, managers can make informed decisions about the effects smoke may have on communities. 11

And here is a map layer created using the same inputs as the previous slide, except that, instead of low fuel moisture/summer values, high fuel moisture content input values were used and spring season was selected. The difference from the previous slide may be hard to see at first glance. Let’s zoom into one of the highly populated areas. 12

On closer inspection of the vicinity surrounding this highly populated area, we can see that more acreage falls into the two higher classes of PM2.5 emissions (dark gray and black) in the low moisture summer burn scenario shown on the left than in the high moisture spring burn scenario on the right. In other words, there are potentially higher concentrations of PM2.5 produced during a low moisture summer burn. This type of information informs land b t t ti l l l f PM2 5 l t d managers about potential levels of PM2.5 near populated areas and predicts which conditions will potentially produce higher or lower amounts of pollutants. 13

Lets look at an example to illustrate the use of WFAT in a real management situation– you are creating a burn plan for a unit that parallels the entrance Rd. to the Grand Canyon National park. It is a unit that was burned 4 years ago but needs frequent fire to maintain the ponderosa pine overstory and reduce the risk of

• wildfires. The objectives of the burn are to
• 1. Reduce the cover of the piyon pine and juniper

2 R d litt b ild th it

• 2. Reduce litter build up across the site
• 3. Maintain the pine overstory
• 4. Limit the smoke on the Entrance rd.
• 5. Limit the impact of smoke on the view of the canyon and the

health of the visitors. In order to meet these objectives you need to understand both the In order to meet these objectives you need to understand both the conditions that will be too mild to reduce litter and remove some

• f the pinyon and juniper, and well as the conditions that would

be too extreme and cause mortality in the ponderosa pine and excessive smoke over the Entrance rd. and into the canyon. By using WFAT you can enter in different environmental conditions and narrow down the conditions that are most likely to meet and narrow down the conditions that are most likely to meet your objectives without going too far. 14

Many times it is required to know the potential fire behavior and effects for prescribed fires and potential wildfires for planning and monitoring documents. This allows managers to prepare in advance of an event to prevent undesirable outcomes, and may help justify action that needs to be taken to avoid certain

• utcomes.

To illustrate this, let’s next look at two categories of soil heating

• utput from WFAT: soil surface temperature and soil depth heated

to 60 degrees Celsius. Soil surface temperature during a fire can affect vegetation in several ways. For example, high surface temperatures can enhance seed germination and stimulate plant growth in some species seed germination and stimulate plant growth in some species. However, it can also reduce surface vegetation, which can increase water flow and erosion across the soil surface. In the example here, there are very slight differences in surface temperature between the low fuel moisture summer scenario and the high fuel moisture spring scenario. However, surface temperature alone is not necessarily a good indicator of fire’s effects on soil and 15 y g

• vegetation. To get a more complete picture of soil heating effects,

we must also look at duration and depth of temperature. On the next slide we’ll look at the depth at which soil temperature reaches 60 degrees Celsius – the temperature at which unprotected plant tissue death begins to occur – under the same two input scenarios.

High temperatures deep into the soil profile break down organic material and can change soil chemical and physical composition. You can see on the slide that during the low moisture summer burn scenario, more of the area’s soil is heated to 60 degrees down to nine centimeters, as indicated by the bright red color. Predicting first order fire effects such as soil depth heated to 60 degrees Celsius can aid managers in determining possible second d fi ff t h i d t i t l d t l

• rder fire effects such as erosion and nutrient release due to loss
• f the vegetation layer.

16

In addition, using an overlay such as streams or watershed , g y boundaries can help managers make better informed decisions by understanding where the second order effects are likely to occur. For example, on this slide, we have zoomed into a riparian area from the previous maps. Using a stream overlay allows managers to see which riparian areas may be most at risk of erosion due to t ti l f h t d il Th l th t vegetation loss from over-heated soil. They can also see that deeper soil is heated to 60 degrees Celsius during the summer season. 17

WFAT can also be used to plan and assess the appropriate management response to future wildland fire. This response depends on land management objectives and whether a fire can be managed with no adverse outcomes to life or property. Tool output maps showing potential fire behavior and effects can be used to support these decisions. For example, a community may have a sensitive threshold to smoke pollutants. The maps d d b th t l h l d t i h th fi produced by the tool can help a manager determine whether a fire should be allowed to burn or whether it should be suppressed based on predicted smoke emission outputs. This slide shows example predicted emission outputs for carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). 18

Using a previous example you can also see that changing the environmental conditions, will change the potential behavior of the

• fire. If under the current fire conditions the fire is predicted to be

extreme around populated areas, making control difficult and risk to the community greater, that fire might not be allowed to burn under natural conditions and would then be suppressed. T t l ildfi it i i t t t k f l d ffi i tl To control wildfires it is important to work as safely and efficiently as possible. A large part of this is choosing wisely where to put control and contingency lines, by using a map such as this under a variety of environmental conditions, management actions can be located where they are most likely to be effective. 19

Lastly, one of the most powerful applications of WFAT is that the fire behavior outputs can be used to help calibrate fuel input layers used in FARSITE, FlamMap, and WFAT. Fuel layers are commonly developed using vegetation characteristics as correlates, in other words confirmed fuel characteristics are used to approximate the unknown fuel characteristics at a site. Vegetation attributes alone, however, can be poor predictors of the fuel complex. WFAT outputs b l ki ti l fi b h i h t i ti th t h may be lacking a particular fire behavior characteristic that has frequently been observed during actual fire events, indicating problems with one or more of the fuel input layers. For example, the lack of simulated passive crown fire in an area known to have experienced passive crown fire under the same environmental conditions may indicate a problem with the fire behavior fuel model, canopy base height and/or canopy cover layers Fuel layers can canopy base height, and/or canopy cover layers. Fuel layers can then be refined or calibrated by tools such as the Total Fuel Change Tool (ToFu∆) the Area Change Tool (ACT) or the raster calculator until the expected fire behavior is simulated by WFAT. The Total Fuel Change Tool (ToFu∆) the Area Change Tool (ACT) are also available at www.niftt.gov also available at www.niftt.gov 20

This concludes Part 2: Applications of the FOFEM Mapping Tool. You’ve learned about the benefits of using the tool and have also seen some example applications of the tool. Next, in Part 3 of this lesson, you will view demonstrations on how to run WFAT and view outputs in ArcGIS. After that you will begin designing the final project for this course featuring your own designing the final project for this course, featuring your own application of WFAT. You will post your proposed project in the Blackboard discussion and receive feedback from the instructor and other’s in the course. You will also read and review other student’s projects and give them feedback and ideas. 21