A fuelscape is a quantitative raster representation of the fuel, vegetation, and topography across a landscape. The fuelscape consists of geospatial datasets representing surface fuel model (FM40), canopy cover (CC), canopy height (CH), canopy bulk density (CBD), canopy base height (CBH), and topography (slope, aspect, elevation). These datasets can be combined into a single landscape file (LCP) and used as a fuelscape input in fire behavior modeling programs. The Texas A&M Forest Service (TAMFS) was the source for the fuel and vegetation data for the Texas Wildfire Risk Assessment (TWRA) Fuelscape.

Through the combined efforts of TAMFS and Pyrologix, an updated and calibrated fuelscape was produced as part of the Texas Wildfire Hazard Assessment. This fuelscape covers all lands in the state of Texas (Figure 1) and can be used in the 2023 fire season and beyond to support fire operations in response to wildfire incidents. Pyrologix will also use the TWRAfuelscape to complete a wildfire hazard assessment across the State;the results of which can be used to aid in the planning, prioritization, and implementation of prevention and mitigation activities.

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The purpose of the Southern Region Wildfire Hazard and Risk Assessment (SWRA) is to provide essential information about wildfire hazard across all land ownerships within the region. The foundation of any wildfire risk assessment is the wildfire hazard data used to characterize fire behavior on the landscape.

In the quantitative framework for assessing wildfire risk to highly valued resources and assets (Scott et al. 2013), wildfire hazard is defined as a physical situation with the potential for causing damage to vulnerable resources or assets. Wildfire hazard (Figure 1) is measured by two main factors in this risk assessment framework: 1) burn probability (or likelihood of burning), and 2) fire intensity (measured as flame length, fireline intensity, or other similar measures).

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In March 2022, Pyrologix was contracted by Timmons Group and the New Jersey Forest Fire Service to conduct a wildfire hazard assessment for the state of New Jersey. This project is part of the New Jersey Wildfire Hazard Assessment Project (NJHAZ). This effort involved three primary tasks: calibrating and updating the fuelscape, producing measures of burn probability and simulated fire perimeters, and conducting wildfire intensity modeling with measures of integrated wildfire hazard.

We leveraged an existing fuelscape, developed for the Eastern Region Wildfire Risk Assessment, as a starting point for the NJHAZ project. In that effort, feedback on fuel mapping from fuel and fire behavior specialists across the Eastern Region, including New Jersey, was implemented to calibrate the fuelscape to produce expected fire behavior results. To customize that fuelscape for the New Jersey-specific hazard assessment, we held a fuel review workshop and modified the fuelscape according to the feedback received.

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In September 2021, the Black Hills National Forest (BKF) contracted with Pyrologix to conduct a spatial wildfire hazard assessment across the BKF. The BKF is set to undergo Forest Plan Revision and the Potential Operational Delineations (POD) planning process and identified the need for comprehensive fire modeling to provide supporting documentation. The results of this wildfire hazard assessment will be used by fire and fuels specialists to support those efforts.

The wildfire hazard assessment products were needed in a relatively short timeframe. For this reason, existing fuel data from LANDFIRE and previously completed national burn probability results were leveraged as inputs to the WildEST (Wildfire Exposure Simulation Tool) fire hazard modeling.

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The Eastern Region of the USDA Forest Service contracted with Pyrologix to complete an assessment of wildfire hazard across all land ownerships in the northeastern states. 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 region-wide 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 classifications(1) .Though LF Remap was available for some parts of the country at the outset of the Eastern Region Wildfire Risk Assessment (ERRA) project, the geographic areas needed to cover the entire Eastern Region were not fully available until July of 2020. For this reason, fuel calibration was initially undertaken on the 2014 LANDFIRE data products. Later, when LF Remap became available, the fuel calibration was applied to the LF Remap products to provide a fuelscape based on the best-available LANDFIRE data.

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