The
fuelbed system determines the fuel loadings used in the
Consume emissions calculations.
By default, WFEIS uses
FCCS fuelbeds, which are designed to interface with the Consume emissions model, but users can choose to use
NAWFD fuelbeds instead. Using
NAWFD enables the quantification of error attributed to variability in fuel loadings in emissions estimations with the caveat that it does not have the same comprehensive spatial coverage that FCCS has; some of NAWFD's LANDFIRE Existing Vegetation Type group fuelbeds are missing data, specifically several prominent managed fuelbeds:
Managed Tree Plantation,
Modified-Managed Prairie Grassland; and several prominent natural fuelbeds in Alaska:
White Spruce Forest and Woodland and
Floodplain Forest and Shrubland.
In general
NAWFD median loadings are most similar to
FCCS loadings while
NAWFD mean loadings tend to skew higher than
FCCS.
NAWFD stochastic loadings are drawn randomly from probability distributions and so will vary for every model run, but in general they will be most similar to
NAWFD mean loadings.
Mapping fuelbeds to basemaps
WFEIS uses lookup tables to translate from a
basemap pixel value to fuelbed.
US
For the US, both the
FCCS and
NAWFD fuelbed systems use the
LANDFIRE (LF) Existing Vegetation Type (EVT) basemap.
Different
LANDFIRE versions represent ground conditions in years 2001, 2008, 2010, 2014, and 2016 (REMAP). In WFEIS, burned areas are intersected with the most recently available LF version for the burned date. e.g. all burned areas occuring <2008 use the LF 2001 basemap; burned areas 2008-2009 use the LF 2008 basemap; burned areas 2010-2011 use the LF 2010 basemap; etc.
Canada
For Canada, WFEIS uses the
Fuel Behavior Prediciton (FBP) Fuel Type map. Each FBP type is assigned to an FCCS fuelbed to get fuel loading data.
