A conceptual framework for ranking crown fire potential in wildland fuelbedsThis article is one of a selection of papers published in the Special Forum on the Fuel Characteristic Classification System.

Abstract

This paper presents a conceptual framework for ranking the crown fire potential of wildland fuelbeds with forest canopies. This approach extends the work by Van Wagner and Rothermel, and introduces several new physical concepts to the modeling of crown fire behaviour derived from the reformulated Rothermel surface fire modeling concepts proposed by Sandberg et al. (this issue). This framework forms the basis for calculating the crown fire potentials of Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) fuelbeds (Ottmar et al., this issue). Two new crown fire potentials are proposed (i) the torching potential (TP) and (ii) the active crown potential (AP). A systematic comparison of TP and AP against field observations and Crown Fire Initiation and Spread (CFIS) model outputs produced encouraging results, suggesting that the FCCS framework might be a useful tool for fire managers to consider when ranking the potential for crown fires or evaluating the relative behaviour of crown fires in forest canopies.