A Fuelscape for Colorado All-Lands
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. The foundation of any wildfire hazard or risk assessment is a current-condition fuelscape, updated for recent disturbances and calibrated to reflect the fire behavior potential observed in recent historical wildfire events. We leveraged LANDFIRE 2016 Remap 2.0.0 (LF Remap) data to generate a calibrated fuelscape for use in this Colorado All-Lands (COAL) statewide assessment.
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 classifications1 . 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.
