Wildland Fire Management Research Articles

Understand Daily Fire Suppression Resource Ordering and Assignment Patterns by Unsupervised Learning

Wildland fire management agencies are responsible for assigning suppression resources to control fire spread and mitigate fire risks. This study implements a principle component analysis and an association rule analysis to study wildland fire response resource requests from 2016 to 2018 in the western US to identify daily resource ordering and assignment patterns for large fire incidents. Unsupervised learning can identify patterns in the assignment of individual resources or pairs of resources. Three national Geographic Area Coordination Centers (GACCs) are studied, including California (CA), Rocky Mountain (RMC), and Southwest (SWC) at both high and low suppression preparedness levels (PLs). Substantial differences are found in resource ordering and assignment between GACCs. For example, in comparison with RMC and SWC, CA generally orders and dispatches more resources to a fire per day; CA also likely orders and assigns multiple resource types in combination. Resources are more likely assigned to a fire at higher PLs in all GACCs. This study also suggests several future research directions including studying the causal relations behind different resource ordering and assignment patterns in different regions.

Pre-season fire management planning: the use of Potential Operational Delineations to prepare for wildland fire events

US fire scientists are developing Potential Wildfire Operational Delineations, also known as ‘PODs’, as a pre-fire season planning tool to promote safe and effective wildland fire response, strengthen risk management approaches in fire management and better align fire management objectives. PODs are a collaborative planning approach based on spatial analytics to identify potential wildfire control lines and assess the desirability of fire before ignition. They offer the opportunity to apply risk management principles with partners before the compressed timeframe of incident response. We sought to understand the potential utility of PODs and factors that may affect their use through semistructured interviews with personnel on several national forests. Interviewees said PODs offer a promising shift in the wildland fire management dynamic, particularly by facilitating proactive communication and coordination about wildfire response. Successfully employing PODs will require leadership commitment, stakeholder and partner engagement and interdisciplinary staff involvement. Our work offers insights for national forests and other jurisdictions where managers are looking to strengthen coordination and strategic approaches for wildland fire response by utilising pre-season collaboration and data analytics.

Fifty years of wildland fire science in Canada

We celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Journal of Forest Research by reflecting on the considerable progress accomplished in select areas of Canadian wildland fire science over the past half century. Specifically, we discuss key developments and contributions in the creation of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System; the relationships between wildland fire and weather, climate, and climate change; fire ecology; operational decision support; and wildland fire management. We also discuss the evolution of wildland fire management in Banff National Park as a case study. We conclude by discussing some possible directions in future Canadian wildland fire research including the further evaluation of fire severity measurements and effects; the efficacy of fuel management treatments; climate change effects and mitigation; further refinement of models pertaining to fire risk analysis, fire behaviour, and fire weather; and the integration of forest management and ecological restoration with wildland fire risk reduction. Throughout the paper, we reference many contributions published in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research, which has been at the forefront of international wildland fire science.

Projected Changes in Reference Evapotranspiration in California and Nevada: Implications for Drought and Wildland Fire Danger

AbstractRecent high impact wildfires and droughts in California and Nevada have been linked to extremes in the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), respectively. Both indices are dependent on reference evapotranspiration (ET0). Future changes in ET0 for California and Nevada are examined, calculated from global climate model simulations downscaled by Localized Constructed Analogs (LOCA). ET0 increases of 13–18% at seasonal timescales are projected by late century (2070–2099), with greatest relative increases in winter and spring. Seasonal ET0 increases are most strongly driven by warmer temperatures, with increasing specific humidity having a smaller, but noteworthy, counter tendency. Extreme (95th percentile) EDDI values on the 2‐week timescale have coincided with recent large wildfires in the area. Two‐week EDDI extremes are projected to increase by 6–10 times during summer and 4–6 times during autumn by the end of the century. On multiyear timescales, the occurrence of extreme droughts based on 3‐year SPEI below the historical fifth percentile, similar to that experienced during the 2012–2016 drought across the region, is projected to increase 3–15 times by late century. Positive trends in extreme multiyear droughts will further increase seasonal fire potential through degraded forests and increased fuel loads and flammability. Understanding how these drought metrics change on various climate timescales at the local level can provide fundamental information to support the development of long‐term adaptation strategies for wildland fire and water resource management.

Prototyping a Geospatial Atlas for Wildfire Planning and Management

Wildland fire managers are increasingly embracing risk management principles by being more anticipatory, proactive, and “engaging the fire before it starts”. This entails investing in pre-season, cross-boundary, strategic fire response planning with partners and stakeholders to build a shared understanding of wildfire risks and management opportunities. A key innovation in planning is the development of potential operational delineations (PODs), i.e., spatial management units whose boundaries are relevant to fire containment operations (e.g., roads, ridgetops, and fuel transitions), and within which potential fire consequences, suppression opportunities/challenges, and strategic response objectives can be analyzed to inform fire management decision making. As of the summer of 2020, PODs have been developed on more than forty landscapes encompassing National Forest System lands across the western USA, providing utility for planning, communication, mitigation prioritization, and incident response strategy development. Here, we review development of a decision support tool—a POD Atlas—intended to facilitate cross-boundary, collaborative strategic wildfire planning and management by providing high-resolution information on landscape conditions, values at risk, and fire management resource needs for individual PODs. With the atlas, users can rapidly access and assimilate multiple forms of pre-loaded data and analytics in a customizable manner. We prototyped and operationalized this tool in concert with, and for use by, fire managers on several National Forests in the Southern Rocky Mountains of the USA. We present examples, discuss real-world use cases, and highlight opportunities for continued decision support improvement.

Criteria-Based Identification of Important Fuels for Wildland Fire Emission Research

Studies of the emissions from wildland fires are important for understanding the role of these events in the production, transport, and fate of emitted gases and particulate matter, and, consequently, their impact on atmospheric and ecological processes, and on human health and wellbeing. Wildland fire emission research provides the quantitative information needed for the understanding and management of wildland fire emissions impacts based on human needs. Recent work to characterize emissions from specific fuel types, or those from specific areas, has implicitly been driven by the recognition of the importance of those fuel types in the context of wildland fire science; however, the importance of specific fuels in driving investigations of biomass-burning emissions has not been made explicit thus far. Here, we make a first attempt to discuss the development and application of criteria to answer the question, “What are the most important fuels for biomass-burning emissions investigations to inform wildland fire science and management?” Four criteria for fuel selection are proposed: “(1) total emissions, (2) impacts, (3) availability and uncertainty, and (4) potential for future importance.” Attempting to develop and apply these criteria, we propose a list of several such fuels, based on prior investigations and the body of wildland-fire emission research.

Taking a Tabula Rasa Approach to Wildfire Governance: A Thought Experiment and Call for Papers and an Open Dialogue on the Topical Issue of Fire

This perspective serves as a preface to the Topical Issue of Fire and presents an opportunity, framed within the classic approach of a thought experiment, to discuss how a new wildfire governance framework may be created from the ground up, if it were unencumbered by any existing construct, or experiences. It is not specific to any one country or fire regime; rather, it is intended merely to stimulate a wider conversation about where we are at collectively, and where we may want to move to in the future with our policies, organization, science, management, technology; or any of the myriad components that comprise the greater discipline of wildland fire science and management. The authors suggest that loosening the shackles of reality may allow for innovative discussion and the generation of transformative ideas to help ecosystems and communities better coexist with fire. We invite perspectives to submit to this Topical Issue on all aspects of wildfire governance, including reviews and perspectives. We also welcome perspectives on how to adapt wildfire governance in the face of exceptional events such as pandemics, earthquakes, famines, and war.

Spatially-Explicit Prediction of Wildfire Burn Probability Using Remotely-Sensed and Ancillary Data

Wildfire is a critical process shaping the structure and composition of forest landscapes of western Canada. Spatially-explicit forest disturbance history and forest structure estimated using remotely-sensed data enables the characterization of burn probability, defined as the susceptibility of landscapes to fire hazard over time. In this research, we leveraged the Landsat archive to determine the capacity of land cover, forest structure, and forest disturbance information, together with ancillary data, to estimate burn probability. We analyzed the interactions between a number of contributing factors and identified landscapes with high probability to burn across forested ecosystems of Saskatchewan, Canada. Overall, we found that forests composed of coniferous species, with shorter trees (<3 m), low canopy height variability, an open stand structure (<10% canopy cover), and low timber volumes (<50 m3/ha), had higher burn probabilities. A 2015 burn probability map indicated that forests that did burn in 2015 (determined using independently mapped wildfires) had a median predicted burn probability of 81%, while the median burn probability for unburned forest area was 19%. This paper demonstrates the potential to generate detailed and spatially-explicit burn probability maps from time series remote sensing data to inform wildland fire risk modeling, management, and mitigation.

Satellite Remote Sensing Contributions to Wildland Fire Science and Management

This paper reviews the most recent literature related to the use of remote sensing (RS) data in wildland fire management. Studies dealing with pre-fire assessment, active fire detection, and fire effect monitoring are reviewed in this paper. The analysis follows the different fire management categories: fire prevention, detection, and post-fire assessment. Extracting the main trends from each of these temporal sections, recent RS literature shows growing support of the combined use of different sensors, particularly optical and radar data and lidar and optical passive images. Dedicated fire sensors have been developed in the last years, but still, most fire products are derived from sensors that were designed for other purposes. Therefore, the needs of fire managers are not always met, both in terms of spatial and temporal scales, favouring global over local scales because of the spatial resolution of existing sensors. Lidar use on fuel types and post-fire regeneration is more local, and mostly not operational, but future satellite lidar systems may help to obtain operational products. Regional and global scales are also combined in the last years, emphasizing the needs of using upscaling and merging methods to reduce uncertainties of global products. Validation is indicated as a critical phase of any new RS-based product. It should be based on the independent reference information acquired from statistically derived samples. The main challenges of using RS for fire management rely on the need to improve the integration of sensors and methods to meet user requirements, uncertainty characterization of products, and greater efforts on statistical validation approaches.

Fire Behavior, Fuel Consumption, and Turbulence and Energy Exchange during Prescribed Fires in Pitch Pine Forests

Prescribed fires are conducted extensively in pine-dominated forests throughout the Eastern USA to reduce the risk of wildfires and maintain fire-adapted ecosystems. We asked how fire behavior and fuel consumption during prescribed fires are associated with turbulence and energy fluxes, which affect the dispersion of smoke and transport of firebrands, potentially impacting local communities and transportation corridors. We estimated fuel consumption and measured above-canopy turbulence and energy fluxes using eddy covariance during eight prescribed fires ranging in behavior from low-intensity backing fires to high-intensity head fires in pine-dominated forests of the New Jersey Pinelands, USA. Consumption was greatest for fine litter, intermediate for understory vegetation, and least for 1 + 10 hour wood, and was significantly correlated with pre-burn loading for all fuel types. Crown torching and canopy fuel consumption occurred only during high-intensity fires. Above-canopy air temperature, vertical wind velocity, and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) in buoyant plumes above fires were enhanced up to 20.0, 3.9 and 4.1 times, respectively, compared to values measured simultaneously on control towers in unburned areas. When all prescribed fires were considered together, differences between above-canopy measurements in burn and control areas (Δ values) for maximum Δ air temperatures were significantly correlated with maximum Δ vertical wind velocities at all (10 Hz to 1 minute) integration times, and with Δ TKE. Maximum 10 minute averaged sensible heat fluxes measured above canopy were lower during low-intensity backing fires than for high-intensity head fires, averaging 1.8 MJ m−2 vs. 10.6 MJ m−2, respectively. Summed Δ sensible heat values averaged 70 ± 17%, and 112 ± 42% of convective heat flux estimated from fuel consumption for low-intensity and high-intensity fires, respectively. Surprisingly, there were only weak relationships between the consumption of surface and understory fuels and Δ air temperature, Δ wind velocities, or Δ TKE values in buoyant plumes. Overall, low-intensity fires were effective at reducing fuels on the forest floor, but less effective at consuming understory vegetation and ladder fuels, while high-intensity head fires resulted in greater consumption of ladder and canopy fuels but were also associated with large increases in turbulence and heat flux above the canopy. Our research quantifies some of the tradeoffs involved between fire behavior and turbulent transfer of smoke and firebrands during effective fuel reduction treatments and can assist wildland fire managers when planning and conducting prescribed fires.

Advancing Fire Ecology in 21st Century Rangelands

Fire ecology has a long history of empirical investigation in rangelands. However, the science is inconclusive and incomplete, sparking increasing interest on how to advance the discipline. Here, we introduce a new framework for qualitatively and quantitatively understanding the ranges of variability in fire regimes typical of experimental investigations in rangeland fire science compared with the range of conditions that actually occurred during contemporary social-ecological times. We implement this framework for one of rangelands’ most pyrogenic systems—the Great Plains of North America. We identify four social-ecological fire eras that have epitomized people’s relationship with wildland fire in the Great Plains since the last glacial maxima. These cultural fire eras include the now-extinct coexistence era (indigenous fire use), the suppression era (extermination of wildland fire occurrence), the shadow era (localized prescribed burning groups), and the emerging wildfire era (resulting from wildland fire management failures, continued decoupling of human-fire ignitions, and global change). Our synthesis demonstrates that experimental fire conditions have not explored the types and ranges of variation in fire regime components responsible for shaping rangeland vegetation—now, in the past, or into the future. Instead, scientific investigations have focused largely on controlling and minimizing sources of uncertainty and experimental variation, essentially eliminating ranges of variation that underpin the functioning of fire in modern social-ecological systems. Yet a series of scientific investigations exist that targeted a wider range of variability in fire regime components, leading to major advancements and the rejection of a number of long-standing rules of thumb in rangeland science and management. These include 1) the manipulation of fire return interval, 2) the pyric herbivory experiments, and 3) the extreme fire trials. We discuss the general philosophy shared among these studies, introduce scientific standards needed to avoid common pitfalls, and highlight opportunities to better understand how rangeland pattern and process correspond to critical ranges of variation in the human-fire relationship.

Exploring Adoption of the Wildland Fire Decision Support System: End User Perspectives

AbstractAbstractThe increasing complexity of wildland fire management highlights the importance of sound decision making. Numerous fire management decision support systems (FMDSS) are designed to enhance science and technology delivery or assist fire managers with decision-making tasks. However, few scientific efforts have explored the adoption and use of FMDSS by fire managers. This research couples existing decision support system research and in-depth interviews with US Forest Service fire managers to explore perspectives surrounding the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS). Results indicate that fire managers appreciate many WFDSS components but view it primarily as a means to document fire management decisions. They describe on-the-ground actions that can be disconnected with decisions developed in WFDSS, which they attribute to the timeliness of WFDSS outputs, the complexity of the WFDSS design, and how it was introduced to managers. We conclude by discussing how FMDSS development could address concerns raised by managers.

Effects of policy change on wildland fire management strategies: evidence for a paradigm shift in the western US?

In 2009, new guidance for wildland fire management in the United States expanded the range of strategic options for managers working to reduce the threat of high-severity wildland fire, improve forest health and respond to a changing climate. Markedly, the new guidance provided greater flexibility to manage wildland fires to meet multiple resource objectives. We use Incident Status Summary reports to understand how wildland fire management strategies have differed across the western US in recent years and how management has changed since the 2009 Guidance for Implementation of Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. When controlling for confounding variation, we found the 2009 Policy Guidance along with other concurrent advances in fire management motivated an estimated 27 to 73% increase in the number of fires managed with expanded strategic options, with only limited evidence of an increase in size or annual area burned. Fire weather captured a manager’s intent and allocation of fire management resources relative to burning conditions, where a manager’s desire and ability to suppress is either complemented by fire weather, at odds with fire weather, or put aside due to other priorities. We highlight opportunities to expand the use of strategic options in fire-adapted forests to improve fuel heterogeneity.

Global Wildland Fire Management Research Needs

This review is on global wildland fire management research needs from the standpoint of “integrated fire management”. It seeks to apply a characterisation of fires to frame research needs, and also recognise some differences in research needs between “normal wildfires” and “extreme wildfire events” and draw some distinctions between the needs for developing and developed countries. In the past, the dominant approach to fires in developed countries has been to suppress them including prohibition of fire use. In developing countries, the approach has tended to be similar. However, fires are a landscape problem in both developed and developing contexts, not resulting from insufficient or inadequate means of suppression, but from fuel continuity and accumulation. The impacts of fires are becoming higher profile, due to sizes and intensity in part but also from land use and demographic changes and their interactions, which see more people, more assets and ecological and economic values affected and publicised. Not fully appreciating the ecological role, impact, social, cultural and economic context in which fires are occurring, and the contributing factors and underlying causes of the fire problem, has seen planning, policy, development and other influences, alter landscapes and made populations increasingly vulnerable. Key to successfully integrating ecology, society and fire management technologies is effective analysis of the situation. This requires strengthened focus, including through use of social science and related disciplines. Damaging fires suggest that suppression alone is not sufficient to deal with wildfire, with the damage and loss that results in some cases being catastrophic. The implications of the limits of suppression need to be a component for planning risk reduction, readiness, response and of research. Similarly, comprehensive analyses and figures for damage and losses, including suppression costs, would have implications for wildland fire planning and investment. Existing research findings need to be applied and further research undertaken as necessary. Application to wildland fire management globally of existing research, and further research as needed, is required to analyse, select appropriate strategies, and apply management, monitor implementation and enable continuous improvement to reduce vulnerability and underpin resilience. This approach is termed “integrated fire management” and is particularly valuable for developing countries. For them, there may be the potential to reduce or avoid the wildfire damage and loss trends experienced in developed countries, through development and application of what has already been researched and operationalised in other contexts.

Development and Evaluation of a Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes Solver in WindNinja for Operational Wildland Fire Applications

An open source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver has been incorporated into the WindNinja modeling framework. WindNinja is widely used by wildland fire managers, as well as researchers and practitioners in other fields, such as wind energy, wind erosion, and search and rescue. Here, we describe the CFD solver and evaluate its performance against the WindNinja conservation of mass (COM) solver, and previously published large-eddy simulations (LES), for three field campaigns with varying terrain complexity: Askervein Hill, Bolund Hill, and Big Southern Butte. We also compare the effects of two model settings in the CFD solver, namely the discretization scheme used for the advection term of the momentum equation and the turbulence model, and provide guidance on model sensitivity to these settings. Additionally, we investigate the computational mesh and difficulties regarding terrain representation. Two important findings from this work are: (1) CFD solver predictions are significantly better than COM solver predictions at windward and lee side observation locations, but no difference was found in predicted speed-up at ridgetop locations between the two solvers, and (2) the choice of discretization scheme for advection has a significantly larger effect on the simulated winds than the choice of turbulence model.

Moisture Sorption Models for Fuel Beds of Standing Dead Grass in Alaska

Sorption models were developed to predict the moisture content in fuelbeds of standing dead grass from ambient weather measurements. Intuition suggests that the response time of standing dead grass to diurnal changes in weather is negligible and that moisture content tracks the equilibrium moisture content under most field conditions. This assumption suggests that moisture content could be modelled by empirically fitting coefficients to equations of equilibrium moisture content using field measurements. Here, six equations commonly used in wildland fire management and other industries were fit using 293 measurements of weather and moisture content in standing dead grass from Alaska, U.S.A. Predictors were air temperature and either relative humidity or dewpoint depression. Mean absolute errors of the best three models were approximately 1.16% of moisture content. The models predicted well the moisture content of an independently collected dataset from Canada but less so a set from Australia. The models may be used in wildland fire danger rating and fire behavior prediction systems.

Impact of the North American monsoon on wildfire activity in the southwest United States

The North American monsoon (NAM) is an annual climate system phenomenon that develops over the Sierra Madre Occidental in western Mexico and spreads northwards into the southwest United States from June through September bringing large quantities of rainfall and lightning, which can vary greatly on intra‐ and inter‐annual timescales. The timing of the NAM onset can lengthen or shorten the wildfire season in the southwest United States. Here we determine NAM onset thresholds and subsequent dates for the Southwest Area (SWA; Arizona, New Mexico, west Texas, and Oklahoma panhandle) and each SWA Predictive Services Area (PSA) April through September from 1995–2013. Various wildfire activity thresholds were defined to capture days or events associated with increased wildfire activity that are considered “busy” by wildland fire management in the context of an impact on firefighting resources. These defined thresholds allow for a unique examination of the relationship between the NAM and wildfire. Self‐organizing maps (SOMs), utilizing 500‐hPa geopotential heights and precipitable water, were implemented to identify atmospheric patterns contributing to the NAM onset and “busy” days for the SWA and each PSA. Map types from the SOMs analysis showed the transition to, during, and from the NAM. Northwards and eastwards displacements of the subtropical ridge over the SWA were associated with NAM onset. Restructuring of the subtropical ridge in time (i.e., amplification or breakdown) as inferred from map types over the SWA was directly associated with increased wildfire activity. By identifying atmospheric patterns pertinent to busy days of wildfire activity and a wildfire‐based perspective of the NAM in the SWA, fire weather forecasters can proactively identify potential periods that may be particularly impactful on wildfire suppression resources.

Distribution of wildland fires and possible hotspots for the Zimbabwean component of Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area

ABSTRACTThis study reports our attempt to tease up the drivers of wildland fire as well as wildland fire hotspots for the Zimbabwean component of the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA-TFCA). We used the Getis-Ord (Gi*) to identify wildland fire hotspots as well as MaxEnt to identify the drivers of the wildland fire in the KAZA-TFCA. The MaxEnt model used presence-only data of wildland fires from the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) against four environmental variables i.e. air temperature, elevation, human footprint represented by human population density and vegetation condition represented by Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Our MaxEnt model was successful (AUC = 0.78) in predicting wildland fires in the study area. Mean air temperature had the highest contribution to the model (61.3%) followed by elevation (26.3%), human population density (9.8%) and NDVI (2.5%). The overall spatial model showed that the north east as well as areas within 1 km from park boundaries were more susceptible to wildland fires than their surroundings. Getis-Ord (Gi*) analysis showed that fire hotspots occur in northeast, adjacent but outside Hwange National Park and, the entire Chizarira and Matusadona National Parks. These results provide baseline information for wildland fire management in the KAZA-TFCA.

Challenges faced in controlling wildland fires in Mazowe A1 resettlement farming areas of Zimbabwe

Wildland fires pose a big threat to both flora and fauna. In Zimbabwe an estimated 1 million hectares (ha) are burnt annually. The present study uses multiple sources of information including review of published literature, reports, field observations, questionnaires and interviews to investigate the challenges faced in controlling wildland fires in A1 resettlement farming areas of Zimbabwe. Two sites, ward 24 and 31 in Mazowe District were used as case studies to compile responses from 400 households. The results of the study indicated that issues of education, experience and lack of information in wildland fire management played a role in wildland fire management. In ward 24.6% never attended school, while 30%, 48% and 8% had reached primary education, secondary education and tertiary education respectively. In ward 31, the highest level of education of the respondents was 8%, 58% and 34% for primary level, secondary level, and tertiary education respectively. The predominant challenge was lack of experience in fire control as 52% of the respondents had never been involved in fire suppression. In addition, lack of information was highlighted as a major cause of wildland fires, as only 35% of respondents had attended fire awareness campaigns. The other challenges included; lack of proper fire fighting equipment, poor volunteerism and poor implementation of policies and regulations. It was concluded that multiple challenges exist in managing wildland fires, and hence more emphasis should be placed in training and equipping communities with fire management skills and provision of fire fighting equipment. A multi-sectoral approach is also recommended for implementation and enforcement of fire management regulations in the resettlement farming areas.

An Evaluation of NDFD Weather Forecasts for Wildland Fire Behavior Prediction

Abstract Wildland fire managers in the United States currently utilize the gridded forecasts from the National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD) to make fire behavior predictions across complex landscapes during large wildfires. However, little is known about the NDFDs performance in remote locations with complex topography for weather variables important for fire behavior prediction, including air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed. In this study NDFD forecasts for calendar year 2015 were evaluated in fire-prone locations across the conterminous United States during periods with the potential for active fire spread using the model performance statistics of root-mean-square error (RMSE), mean fractional bias (MFB), and mean bias error (MBE). Results indicated that NDFD forecasts of air temperature and relative humidity performed well with RMSEs of about 2°C and 10%–11%, respectively. However, wind speed was increasingly underpredicted when observed wind speeds exceeded about 4 m s−1, with MFB and MBE values of approximately −15% and −0.5 m s−1, respectively. The importance of accurate wind speed forecasts in terms of fire behavior prediction was confirmed, and the forecast accuracies needed to achieve “good” surface head fire rate-of-spread predictions were estimated as ±20%–30% of the observed wind speed. Weather station location, the specific forecast office, and terrain complexity had the largest impacts on wind speed forecast error, although the relatively low variance explained by the model (~37%) suggests that other variables are likely to be important. Based on these results it is suggested that wildland fire managers should use caution when utilizing the NDFD wind speed forecasts if high wind speed events are anticipated.