Ground measurements of fuel and fuel consumption from experimental and operational prescribed fires at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida

Ground-level measurements of fuel loading, fuel consumption, and fuel moisture content were collected on nine research burns conducted at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida in November, 2012. A grass or grass-shrub fuelbed dominated eight of the research blocks; the ninth was a managed longleaf pine (Pinus palustrus) forest. Fuel loading ranged from 1.7 Mg ha-1 on a sparsely vegetated grass site to 19.9 Mg ha-1 on the managed longleaf pine site. Fuel consumption followed suit and was lowest on the sparsely vegetated site (1.1 Mg ha-1) and highest on the forested site (6.7 Mg ha-1). A fuelbed selected from the fuelbed library of the Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) matched well with the forested site. Consume 3.0 and FOFEM 5.9 predicted total fuel consumption to within 0.5 Mg ha-1 of the measured total consumption in 4 of the 9 blocks randomly selected for comparison. This preliminary data analysis is part of the Joint Fire Science Program-supported project 'A Data Set for Fire and Smoke Model Development and Evaluation - the RxCADRE Project'. The entire dataset will be available in a globally accessible repository for testing and evaluation of fire and fuel models in 2014.