Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team

Estimating the Biomass of Hand-Piled Fuels for Smoke Management Planning

Land managers need a tool to accurately and efficiently estimate the biomass of hand-piled fuels as pile burning becomes a more widespread and common method for treating high fire hazard areas with heavy surface fuels. Past pile characterization research dealt only with large, crane-constructed and tractor-built piles which have different physical properties and contain larger fuel particles (tree boles and large limbs).

We will:

• Measure and weigh hand-constructed piles to determine the relationships between pile composition, pile size and pile biomass, and
• Sample different vegetation types and pile sizes to develop equations for estimating hand-pile biomass.

The results of this project will allow land managers to more accurately assess biomass in hand piles, leading to better smoke production estimates, improved burn scheduling, and more accurate compliance with the maximum allowable emissions limits as determined by various state smoke management plans.

Update June 23, 2008 -- Field work was completed on the Joint Fire Science Program project to estimate the biomass of hand-piled fuels for smoke management planning. Collection sites included the Wenatchee-Okanogan National Forests in Washington, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in northern California, the Los Padres and Sequoia national forests in southern California, and on BLM lands near Vale in eastern Oregon. Initial analysis of the data is underway, and a draft of the final report is expected to be complete by mid-October.

The end products of this work will be:

• An improved pile-computation routine for piles in the widely-used fuel and fire management software CONSUME 3.0
• Technical documentation that informs accurate fuels data collection and calculation of biomass.
• Research paper that outlines guidelines for estimating volume, biomass and smoke production of hand-piled fuels
• Article in Fire Management Today outlining methods for estimating biomass and emissions of hand-piled fuels

Project Lead: Clint Wright

We acknowledge funding from the Joint Fire Science Program under Project JFSP 07-2-1-57.

U.S. Forest Service - PNW- FERA
Last Modified: Thursday, 26 June 2008 at 11:59:28 EDT