Forest Roads and Operational Wildfire Response Planning
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Wildfire Response Planning on the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, Colorado, USA
3. Wildfire Response on the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest: Cameron Peak Fire
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Disclaimer
Appendix A
Layer | Description | Data Sources |
---|---|---|
roaddist | Euclidean distance (m) from major roads defined as speed categories 1–5 (highest speeds). | NAVTEQ/HERE road polylines (here.com) |
barrierdist | Euclidean distance (m) from waterbodies and large patches of non-burnable cover. Waterbodies include perennial streams, rivers, lakes, reservoirs, swamps, and marshes. Large patches of non-burnable cover were defined as contiguous areas of non-burnable fuels ≥ 1.8 ha. | National hydrography dataset (usgs.gov/core-science-systems/ngp/national-hydrography), LANDFIRE fuels (landfire.gov) |
costdist | Least cost distance (unitless) from major roads accounting for firefighter travel resistance factors like O’Connor et al. (2017). Resistance factors (in parentheses) account for minor roads (2), trails (4), no roads or trails (10), increasing travel difficulty with slope (1–16), and increasing travel difficulty with waterbody width and depth (5–30). Resistance factors are summed except for minor roads and trails. | NAVTEQ/HERE road polylines (here.com), USFS trail polylines (https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/), National hydrography dataset (usgs.gov/core-science-systems/ngp/national-hydrography), LANDFIRE topography (landfire.gov) |
RTC | Resistance to control was calculated by fire behavior fuel model using the inverse of fireline production rates from Dillon et al. (2015) converted first to m h−1. | LANDFIRE fuels (landfire.gov) |
flatdist | Euclidean distance (m) from flat topography defined as topographic position index (TPI) (Weiss 2001) between −12 and 12, and slope ≤ 6 deg. | LANDFIRE topography (landfire.gov) |
valleydist | Euclidean distance (m) from valleys defined as TPI < −12. | LANDFIRE topography (landfire.gov) |
ridgedist | Euclidean distance (m) from ridges defined as TPI > 12. | LANDFIRE topography (landfire.gov) |
steepdist | Euclidean distance (m) from steep topography defined as TPI between −12 and 12, and slope > 6 deg. | LANDFIRE topography (landfire.gov) |
SDI | Relative measure of ground resource suppression difficulty index (SDI) from Rodríguez y Silva et al. (2014). SDI is calculated by dividing an energy behavior index based on flame length and heat per unit area by the sum of indices for accessibility, penetrability, mobility, and fireline construction ease. The fire behavior inputs were modeled using FlamMap 5.0 (Finney et al. 2015) for historical fire season 3rd percentile fuel moisture and 97th percentile wind speeds. | NAVTEQ/HERE road polylines (here.com), USFS trail polylines (https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/), LANDFIRE fuels and topography (landfire.gov), RAWS (raws.nifc.gov) |
ROS | Fire rate of spread (ROS) (chains h−1) was modeled using FlamMap 5.0 (Finney et al. 2015) for historical fire season 3rd percentile fuel moisture and 97th percentile wind speeds. | LANDFIRE (landfire.gov), RAWS (raws.nifc.gov) |
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Control Feature Type | Segments | Length | |
---|---|---|---|
(Count) | (km) | (%) | |
Road | 420 | 1728.4 | 81.8 |
Divided highway | 7 | 49.8 | 2.4 |
Highway | 34 | 212.6 | 10.1 |
Paved | 35 | 151.7 | 7.2 |
Improved | 177 | 704.8 | 33.4 |
Unimproved | 167 | 609.3 | 28.8 |
Trail | 43 | 183.7 | 8.7 |
Ridge | 23 | 79.6 | 3.8 |
Stream | 18 | 41.6 | 2.0 |
Fuel transition | 9 | 36.0 | 1.7 |
None | 23 | 40.8 | 1.9 |
Waterbody | 2 | 2.3 | 0.1 |
Total | 538 | 2112.3 | 100.0 |
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Thompson, M.P.; Gannon, B.M.; Caggiano, M.D. Forest Roads and Operational Wildfire Response Planning. Forests 2021, 12, 110. https://doi.org/10.3390/f12020110
Thompson MP, Gannon BM, Caggiano MD. Forest Roads and Operational Wildfire Response Planning. Forests. 2021; 12(2):110. https://doi.org/10.3390/f12020110
Chicago/Turabian StyleThompson, Matthew P., Benjamin M. Gannon, and Michael D. Caggiano. 2021. "Forest Roads and Operational Wildfire Response Planning" Forests 12, no. 2: 110. https://doi.org/10.3390/f12020110