Schedule fuel treatments to fragment high fire hazard fuel patches

Abstract

Fuel treatment is an important component of wildland fire management. This research revised a mathematical programming model to schedule fuel treatments to fragment fuel patches with high fire intensity hazard. It differs from many previous fuel treatment allocation models that design treatment layouts based on explicitly modeling specific fires’ spread within predefined durations. This approach does not rely on the assumption that we can accurately predict future fires conditions. Scheduling fuel treatments to fragment high fire hazard fuel patches has similar effects as scheduling fuel treatments to control fires with long durations. Fuel treatments aimed directly at patch management could effectively lower the risk of future fires that may spread along various directions and with different spread speeds and durations. Tests also suggested that fuel treatment layouts designed to control fires with shorter durations might not perform well when the actual fire duration is much longer. This research presented a new and practical approach in fragmenting fuel patches through efficient fuel treatments allocation.