Wildfire Risk for All Lands in Colorado
The effort to produce a quantitative wildfire risk assessment across all land ownerships in Colorado began in February 2019 when the Rocky Mountain Region of the USDA Forest Service contracted with Pyrologix to calibrate and update a fuelscape, conduct wildfire hazard modeling, characterize the response of multiple Highly Valued Resources and Assets (HVRA) to wildfire, and complete wildfire risk calculations. Though this effort was initiated by the Forest Service, care was taken to include the considerations of multiple agencies and stakeholder groups within the State.
The COAL wildfire risk assessment project consisted of three parts: fuelscape update, wildfire hazard assessment, and wildfire risk assessment. Reports documenting the methods and results of the updated fuelscape(1) and wildfire hazard products(2) are available for download.
We leveraged LANDFIRE 2016 Remap 2.0.0 (LF Remap) data to generate a current condition fuelscape for this Colorado All-Lands (COAL) statewide assessment. The fuelscape was updated for recent disturbances and calibrated to reflect the fire behavior potential observed in recent historical wildfire events. LF Remap was released in the spring of 2019 with significant improvements over previous versions of LANDFIRE, including the use of new satellite imagery and continuous vegetation cover and height classifications(3) .The COAL fuelscape was first produced for use in the 2020 fire season and wildfire hazard modeling using this fuelscape had begun. However, the unprecedented wildfire season of 2020 had a significant impact on the fuelscape used to represent the “current conditions.” In light of this, Pyrologix generated a new fuelscape to incorporate the fuel changes from the 2020 wildfires and bring the fuelscape forward to a “2021 capable” timeframe.
