Fuels and Fire History

What is the current stand age?

The stand history was needed to reference the fuel condition to the given year for which the fuels dataset was being generated. In other words, having identified a fuel condition and successional sequence typical for an area, the stand age enabled us to assess at what point in the sequence was the stand. Using maps of historical fire perimeters recorded by the Los Angeles County Fire Department and made digital by the National Park Service, detailed information concerning the time since a stand had been last burned by a fire was available. Although we could also determine the number of times that a stand had burned, or fire frequency, this variable was not included in the heuristic of postfire succession described above. Fire frequency almost certainly impacts the fuel condition, especially in the case of a vegetation cover type "conversion". The significance of omitting this variable is unknown. In addition to identifying the current stand age, a routine was written that could calculate the stand age and fire frequency at any point in time using the historical data. This routine is important for making historical reconstructions of fuel state for use in simulating historical fires.