The SVS-STANDFIRE connection Conference call January 24, 2013 STANDFIRE project

Limitations of current fire modeling framework in fuel treatment s and crown fire  Rothermel model – 1972 – surface fire model  Crown fire approach – generally weak and shows underprediction bias  Don’t capture fuel heterogeneity -- whole stand is considered as the average condition  No within-stand spatial aspects -- difficult to really evaluate spacing/ gaps between fuels  Transitions from surface to crown fire not well addressed  Fire / atmosphere couplings can produce rapid changes – not addressed by current models  May underestimate potential threats to firefighter / community safety

Dynamic fire models  Finer scale: many small cells, 3D  Mechanistic and deterministic – not stochastic  robust physics – address couplings  Computationally demanding  Research emphasis: not yet used in management … BUT  … have big potential for guiding management. Fire modeling: Now in 3D!

WFDS -- Oblique perspective view illustrating 2m numerical 3D mesh used in fire simulations – with canopy fuels shown

WFDS -- Side perspective view illustrating 2m numerical 3D mesh used in fire simulations – with canopy fuels shown

Big picture on STANDFIRE project Intent: to provide an alternate analytical pathway for evaluating fire/fuel interactions for a stand for a single point in time. (fuel treatment analysis) Use the same fuels information currently used in FFS-FVS. To ensure continued capacity to examine changes over time, fire effects, fuel states and fire behavior outputs should carry back to FVS. Project is intended to be modular, file in/out, with GUI etc separate from core program

Current strategy (still in progress) Use SVS file (with tree coordinates) as file in input (will be read by our program) We can use the spatial representation of trees in SVS directly in our simulations. We can also take advantage of other fuel information – surface fuel heterogeneity or woody debris. We can also carry out detailed spatially explicit treatments.

The French Connection Our colleagues in France already have a working system with many of the capabilities that we desire in STANDFIRE, called FuelManager. Our plan is to work with them to leverage their work and ours for the best benefit.

Fuel manager – surface fuels (defined as polygons)

3D visualization in FuelManager Left: before treatment Right: After (spatially explicit) treatment Left: Crown scorch after a fire simulation Right: Outputs over time

Tree List (Standard FVS Input) FVS Stand List with Bomass and TreeID (CSV) Spatial Coordinate s WFDS Input File Ensemble WFDS Simulations FVS-STANDFIRE (Fire Effects File) Fire Behavior Metrics (t0) Fuel Metrics t0 t1

STANDFIRE Tree List FVS TreeID SPP DBH Ht CR TPA MGR BirthyrCBH TreeID Foliage 1hr CrownWidth TreeID Foliage 1hr CrownWidth DeathYear Orientation TreeID SPP DBH Ht CR TPA BrithYr Fol 1hr CrownWidth 1hr 10hr 100hr 1khr D L Tree Level Live Tree Level Dead Recruitment Fuel Pool TreeID XYZ 1hr 10hr 100hr 1khr D L Fuel Inventory WFDS Fire Effects Information