Estimating Initial and Foliar Fuel Moistures
Important! LBP is intended to be used to gauge fuel treatment effectiveness, integrated hazard and/or wildfire risk. Inputs should represent the “worst case scenario” or “problem fire” conditions. Potential sources of initial fuel moistures, wind speed and wind direction could include:
- Initial fuel moistures calculated in Fire Family Plus from a local RAWS using historic weather from the past 10 to 20 years representing 90-97th percentile conditions.
- Initial fuel moistures from a known ‘problem fire’ on a day of maximal growth.
- Predefined initial fuel moistures for very dry or dry conditions (Scott and Burgan 2005) in combination with known or predicted worst case scenario wind speed and wind direction.
Fire behavior modeling requires you to input initial fuel moistures and provides the option to change foliar moisture from its default setting.
Below are options to help you determine fuel moistures for use in IFTDSS:
- Refer to Fuel Moisture Tables
- Determining live, dead, and foliar moisture via IFTDSS Automatic 97th Percentile Landscape Fire Behavior (Auto97th) Report
- Referring to historic fuel moistures from the Forest Service Wildland Fire Assessment Tool database
- Determining fuel moisture from field measurements outlined in the Fire Behavior Field Reference Guide's section on fuel moisture.
