Great Plains

Fire Safe Council

Definitions:

CAR— Community at Risk.
Canopy Base Height—The distance from the ground to where the canopy begins.
Community—A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government.
Community At Risk— A group of homes and other structures with basic infrastructure in an area that is at risk from uncontrolled wildfire.
Community Wildfire Protection Plan—A document that addresses the needs of the people involved in its development. Issues such as wildfire response, hazard mitigation, community preparedness, and structure protection may be covered topics.
Crowning Index—Conditions needed for fire to spread through the canopy.
Crown Fire—A wildfire that spreads across the tops, (crowns), of trees, more or less independant of any fire on the ground.
Dry Hydrant—A non-pressurized pipe connected to a water source that can be accessed by a fire protection agency to draft water.
Hazard—A fuel complex defined by kind arrangement volume, condition and location that forms a special threat of ignition or of suppression difficulty.
HFRA— Healthy Forest Restoration Act; 2003.
Fire Regime Condition Class 3 —This term means the condition class description developed by the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in the Development of Coarse-Scale Spatial Data for Wildland Fire and Fuel Management (RMRS-GTR-87, http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_gtr87.html), dated April 2000
(including any subsequent revisions). Fire regimes on the land have been significantly altered from historical ranges. A high risk exists of losing key ecosystem components from fire. Fire frequencies have departed from historical frequencies by multiple return intervals, resulting in dramatic
changes to the size, frequency, intensity, or severity of fires or landscape patterns. Values of vegetation attributes have been significantly altered from their historical ranges.
Fire Regime I—This term means an area that historically has had low-severity fires every 0 to 35 years that is located primarily in low-elevation forests of pine, oak, and pinyon-juniper.
Fire Regime II—This term means an area that historically has had stand-replacementseverity fires every 0 to 35 years that is located primarily in low- to mid-elevation rangeland, grassland, or shrub land.
Fire Regime III—This term means an area that historically has had mixed-severity fires every 35 to 100 years that is located primarily in forests of mixed conifer, dry Douglasfir, or wet ponderosa pine.
Firewise Construction—The use of materials and systems in the design and construction of a building or structure to safegaurd against the spread of fire within the building or structure as well as the spread of fire to other buildings or structures or to adjacent natural areas.
Firewise Landscaping—Vegetation placed around a home or other structure in a manner so as to reduce the exposure of the building to an encroaching wildfire, or slow/inhibit the spread of fire from an adjacent wildland area to the building or from the building to the wildland area.
Fuel—Combustible material that is available to burn.
Home Ignition Zone—See Survivable Space.
Infrastructure—The physical support systems of a subdivision, including roads, power lines and central water and sewage.
Ladder Fuels—Fuels that provide vertical continuity between strata, thereby allowing fire to move from surface fuels to the crowns of trees, (or to structures), with relative ease.
Municipal Water Supply System—A community water system “that serves at least 15 service connections used by year-round residents of the area served by the system; or regularly serves at least 25 year-round residents” (Safe Drinking Water Act, Section 1401, 42 U.S.C.A. 300f.(15)).
NFP—National Fire Plan; August 2000.
Outcrop—A part of a geologic formation that is exposed to the land surface.
Prescribed Burning/Prescribed Fires—Carefully controlled fires set by land managers to reduce hazardous accumulations of wildland vegetation, (fuel), control forest insect and diseases, improve forage for livestock, improve wildlife habitat and maintian healthy ecosystems.
Risk—Activities or things that provide a source of heat sufficient to result in a fire ignition.
Survivable Space—The area between wildland fuels and structures, (30- 200 feet or more), that allows firefighters to protect the structure from wildfire. In the absence of firefighters, this safety zone increases the liklihood that the structure will survive on its own.
Shelterbelt—A barrier of trees and shrubs that protects against the wind and reduces erosion.
Torching Index—The conditions needed to torch individual trees.
Understory—An underlying layer of vegetation, especially the plants that grow beneath a forest’s canopy.
Value—Natural resources, improvements, or other values that may be jeopardized or lost if a fire occurs.
Wildfire—A fire that burns out of conrol in forest or wildlnad areas damaging or destroying natural resources and sometimes threatening or destroying life and property.
Wildland-Urban Interface—A zone where structures and other human development meet and intermingle with undeveloped wildland or vegetative fuels.
Wildland-Urban Interface Buffer Zones —Geographic areas centered around values at risk that help develop mitigation strategies to reduce the risk from wildfire.