A Comparison of Canopy Fuels Estimates

A Comparison of Canopy Fuels Estimates Across Multiple Spatial Scales in a Northern California Oak-Woodland for Improved Fuels Management and Fire Modeling

Presenter: Brieanne Forbes

Co-Presenter(s):
Paris Krause, Matthew Clark

Presenter Status: Graduate student

Department: Biology

Funding Source/Sponsor: Koret Scholars Program

Screenshot URL: https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1BAvJ_LNd0xKYhDSquJdg_3UMVpZR-5Xa

Abstract:
Wildfires are becoming larger due to climate change and historical fire suppression, requiring reevaluation of fuels management approaches. Canopy base height (CBH; the height from the ground to the base of each tree’s foliage, averaged across a plot) is a proxy for canopy fuels used in fire behavior models. However, it is challenging to measure CBH in the field and it is unknown how well CBH directly relates to the amount of ladder fuels (i.e., fuels that carry a fire to the crown of a tree) in oak-woodlands. As such, my project aims to: 1) Determine if a relative ladder fuel cover metric derived from airborne LiDAR is similar to measurements of ladder fuels calculated using photogrammetry and terrestrial laser scanning, and 2) Relate these various measurements of ladder fuels to CBH. This work was carried out in plots with varying wildfire histories at Pepperwood Preserve. Preliminary results indicate that fuels estimates from remote sensing approaches are correlated with CBH.