Modeling Fire Growth Potential by Emphasizing Significant Growth Events: Characterizing a Climatology of Fire Growth Days in Alaska's Boreal Forest

Evaluating current and future risks from wildfires is usually a key element in the decisions about management of those fires. Carrying those evaluations more than a few days into the future requires stochastic approaches using the climatology of environmental conditions that favor or deter wildfire growth. Tools like the Fire Spread Probability (FSPro) simulator, and the Rare Event Risk Assessment Process (RERAP) before it, apply climatology in this way. This analysis identifies key environmental factors using spatial and temporal distribution of MODIS fire detections. The Fine Fuel Moisture Code (FFMC) and Buildup Index (BUI) from the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) are used to define a critical climatology of conditions favorable for significant fire growth in Alaska's Boreal Interior. Further, this fire growth event history is used to inform these stochastic analyses, demonstrating the potential for effective and useful results.