Ok, time for an update. Since I’ve started down this path, the FuelGraph project started as a fire and fuel type visualization tool. Then it became a way to compare models (FBP and CFIS), but some of the original authors of those models felt I was playing a bit fast and loose with fuel moisture concepts. Fair enough. (Just because the FFMC tries to estimate fine fuel moisture content doesn’t mean it actually does a good job, particularly across vastly different vegetation types.)
So a major change and increase in profile was in order. I had come up with a nifty way to link up a couple of models to get away from some FBP system constraints, but to make it actually credible requires quite a bit more analysis and documentation. That got me diving in headfirst to the original FBP System experimental burn documentation – the famed experiments at Sharpsand Creek and Porter Lake and Summit Lake (near Prince George).
At this point I feel like it’s starting to come together. At what ‘it’ is is now termed, rather pretentiously, the ‘Canadian Conifer Pyrometrics’ system. Well, it couldn’t be the Next Generation FBP System, because that name refers to another body of work (I do hope this CCP stuff eventually gets accepted enough to be integrated as an option within the NG-CFFDRS; the details definitely need to be worked out still). In a nutshell, it’s CFIS meets FBP with some tweaks and a simple surface model to tie things together, displayed and controlled (thus far) using FuelGraph.
Here’s the sneak preview, recently presented at the fabulous 6th Fuels & Fire Behaviour Conference (Marseille, France):
FireResearch.ca 