Data Products ›› LANDFIRE Fuel Product Descriptions

Fuel Characteristic Classification System Fuelbeds

The Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) was created to describe wildland fuels and was developed by the USDA, Pacific Northwest Experiment Station, Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory (PWFSL) in Seattle, Washington. The system is designed to provide land managers, regulators, and scientists with a nationally consistent and durable procedure for characterizing and classifying fuels. FCCS provides standardized descriptions of fuelbeds and fire hazard. It can be used to represent input fuel characteristics in software applications such as as the First Order Fire Effects Model (FOFEM; Reinhardt and others 1997), the First Order Fire Effects Model Mapping Tool (FOFEMMT; Hamilton and others 2009), and CONSUME (Ottmar and others 1993). Simply put, FCCS provides standardized descriptions of fuelbeds and fire hazard.

LF_1.1.0 (Refresh 2008) – LF_1.1.0 used LF_1.0.5 (Refresh 2001) data as a launching point to incorporate disturbance and its severity, both managed and natural, which occurred on the landscape after 2001. Specific examples of disturbance are: fire, vegetation management, weather, and insect and disease. The final disturbance data used in LF_1.1.0 are the result of several efforts that include data derived in part from remotely sensed land change methods, Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), and the LANDFIRE Refresh events data call. Vegetation growth was modeled where both disturbance and non-disturbance occurs.

LF_1.0.5 (Refresh 2001) – Imagery used in LF_1.0.0 (LANDFIRE National) covered a span of years, and because of this, several large wildland fires are not represented in the data. LF_1.0.5 data ensure wildland fires through 2001 are represented.

Additional improvements found in LF_1.0.5 include resolving inconsistencies along the international borders and updating aspects of the following: riparian and wetlands areas, agricultural and urban vegetation types as burnable, and adjusting the extent of barren and water land cover types.

LF_1.0.0 (National) – LF_1.0.0 FCCS were created with default fuelbeds provided by the FCCS (Riccardi and others 2007). Each fuelbed describes the physical characteristics of a relatively uniform unit on a landscape that represents a distinct fire environment. By providing fuelbeds, FCCS facilitates the mapping of fuel characteristics and fire hazard assessments, and landscape level spatial fire effects simulations.

Metadata:
LF_1.1.0 (Refresh 2008)
LF_1.0.5 (Refresh 2001)
LF_1.0.0 (National)

Data Distribution Site

Back to Fuel Products

Hamilton, Dale; Bramel, Jody; Helmbrecht, Don; Jones, Jeff; Hann, Wendel. First Order Fire Effects Mapping Tool (FOFEMMT) for ArcGIS 9.2 (version 1.1.0). 2009. National Interagency Fuels, Fire, & Vegetation Technology Transfer. Available: www.niftt.gov.

Ottmar, R. D.; Burns, M. F.; Hall, J. N.; Hanson, A. D. 1993. CONSUME user’s guide. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-304. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacifi c Northwest Research Station, Portland, OR. 17 p.

Reinhardt, E.; Keane, R. E.; Brown, J. K. 1997. First Order Fire Effects Model: FOFEM 4.0 User’s Guide. Gen. Tech. Guide INT-GTR-344. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. 74 p.

Riccardi, Cynthia L.; Ottmar, Roger D.; Sandberg, David V.; Andreu, Anne; Elman, Ella; Kopper, Karen; Long, Jennifer. 2007. The Fuelbed: a Key Element of the Fuel Characteristic Classification System. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 37(12): 2394-2412.