Fuel Concepts - Wildland Fuel Fundamentals and Applications - page 177

increased uncertainty resulting from inappropriate stratifications may overwhelm
most fire analyses producing misleading and inappropriate results. Stratifying fuels
into broad life forms or aggregating all logs into one class regardless of size may
mask differences between costly treatments that may be important for fuel manage-
ment. More comprehensive, accurate, and useful fuel applications and products will
hopefully be developed to meet the needs of fire management by expanding the fo-
cus of wildland fuels beyond the fire behavior construct to a more ecological para-
digm. A fuel ecology approach can meld important ecological relationships with the
needs of fire science to continually create novel, insightful, and useful future fire
applications for the future.
An interesting dilemma is that, if an ecological approach is important for de-
scribing fuels for fire applications, then why have the current fuel inputs to fire
models continued to satisfy fire managers and researchers? Predictions from these
models are used extensively in fire management with acceptable results yet none
deal with spatial variability, ecologically inappropriate fuel components, and tem-
poral dynamics detailed in this topic. A partial answer might be that weather and
topography, not fuels, are more important for fire behavior predictions under most
wildfire conditions (Bessie and Johnson 1995 ); strong winds, dry air, and high tem-
peratures may exert more influence on fire behavior than the fuel complex. Another
reason may be that the models used in fire management are one-dimensional point
models that are designed to be used for small, homogeneous areas and the high
extrapolation error of point estimates across space may exceed the variability of
fuel characteristics. It could also be that, since the FBFMs used in US fire behav-
ior prediction systems are calibrated or adjusted to compute behavior values that
match observed fire behavior (Burgan and Rothermal 1984 ), this calibration, while
entirely subjective, has indirectly accounted for the ecological inconsistencies and
variability in the classification. Finally, it might be that the high uncertainty in fuel
sampling and fire behavior measurements make it difficult to actually validate the
fire behavior and effects predictions (Chap. 7). One thing is certain, if fire manag-
ers and researchers want more accurate and consistent estimates of fire, future fire
models must account for fuel landscape ecology to comprehensively simulate fire
behavior and effects (Thaxton and Platt 2006 ; Parsons et al. 2010 ).
The benefits of a fuel ecology approach are numerous. Fuel properties, espe-
cially loading and density, can be given a better temporal context by linking the
ecological processes of phenology, decomposition, disturbance, and deposition to
ecologically based fuel components. More appropriate and accurate sampling tech-
niques can be devised if fuel types and components are described using ecological
relationships rather than fire modeling parameterizations. Fuelbeds can be more
comprehensively described if the classifications emphasize both ecological and fire
behavior aspects. The mapping of fuel characteristics can be improved by studying
the landscape ecology of fuels and the processes that control them. Inputs to newer
and better fire behavior models will be easier to collect if an ecological context is
used to design input data structures. While the current fuel description systems have
great value to fire management, the future of fire science is best served if new fire
science applications are developed with a focus on both ecological and combustion
science.