Introduction - Wildland Fuel Fundamentals and Applications - page 2

Chapter 1
Introduction

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous
to conduct or more uncertain in its success than …the
introduction of a new order of things.
Niccolo Machiavelli

1.1 What Are Fuels?

Wildland fuels are named for the role they play when they are burned by a wildland
fire. In a combustion science context, fuels are any combustible material (NWCG
2006 ). In an ecological context, these combustible materials are the live and dead
organic matter that ecologists call biomass . Therefore, in this topic, fuel is biomass.
Some may feel that there are biomass pools that rarely burn, such as large tree boles
and snags, and there are some biomass pools that are insufficiently distributed to
support the contagious spread of fire, such as stumps and cones. However, most
biomass material can combust and burn, especially under severe weather conditions
(severe drought with high winds), so the “biomass is fuel” association seems ap-
propriate for this topic. There is often confusion between the singular and plural of
fuel; in this topic, the term fuels is used to describe all the different types and kinds
of biomass in the aggregate, while fuel is used when referring to one particular type
or kind of biomass.
Wildland fuels are the most important environmental factor in fire management.
Brown and Davis ( 1973 ) mention that “fire ignition, spread, and intensity depend
on fuel more than any other factor and it is the fuel that generates the fire behavior
with which fire fighters must cope.” Scott et al. ( 2014 ) say it more simply: “If there
is no fuel, there is no fire.” Countryman ( 1969 ) emphasized that “fuel is the only
factor in the fire environment that humans can control.” The importance of wildland
fuels to fire management cannot be understated and the first step towards fully un-
derstanding fuels is learning the basic terminology used in this topic.