Fuels Management

At left, the fire triangle illustrates that a flame requires oxygen, heat, and fuel to persist. At right, the fire behavior triangle illustrates that weather, topography, and fuels combine to determine fire behavior. At both scales, fuels are perhaps the easiest part of the interaction to control.

NPS Illustration / Sarah Stehn

The term ‘fuel’, when speaking about fire management, generally refers to any burnable material in the potential path of a fire. When considering fire, whether an individual flame, or a wildland fire affecting a large area - fuels are the component to which humans have most control. A major focus of fire management in Alaska is reduction of fuels around structures, communities, or potential routes of escape.

Fuel reduction is the removal of burnable plant matter (branches, shrubs, dead and down material). It is accomplished via several methods. Wildland firefighters use mechanized or manually operated tools (i.e., chainsaw, loppers) to selectively remove vegetation in high priority areas. The materials can be scattered on site, piled on site to be burned later, or dragged out of the area to a central burning or chipping location. Fuel reduction can also be accomplished through fire itself – via a wildfire or a prescribed burn.

Park and fire managers are continuously working to assess and mitigate buildup of fuels around important park structures, ingress and egress routes, cultural sites, and other values. Fuels specialists prioritize fuels reduction projects, gather necessary personnel and equipment, and ensure work can be accomplished safely, efficiently, and in accordance with environmental policy. This work is critical to increase the likelihood of success in protecting park infrastructure in the event of a large wildfire.

 

Left image
Credit: NPS Photo

Right image
Credit: NPS Photo

Photos taken of a mixed spruce-aspen forest before and after a fuels treatment. In this area, the treatment prescription included thinning trees and limbing ladder fuels (e.g., lower branches of the spruce) up to 1.8 m (6 ft) in height. Monitoring will continue at this site to track forest change and assess when future treatments are needed.

 

Fuels Management Video Series

 

 

 

More Information:

• View a storymap about Fuels Reduction in Alaska's National Parks

• Learn more about Fuels Management | U.S. Department of the Interior