Appendix A - Glossary of Terms Used in Wildfire Management and Scientific Plant Names

Glossary of Terms Used in Wildfire Management

Ad valorem

According to the current value, e.g. an ad valorem tax on goods.

Annual grass treatment

This treatment involves either chemical or mechanical methods for reducing flashy fuels associated with annual grass infestations (cheatgrass). Pre-emergent herbicides can be applied at the proper rates near residential areas to reduce the fuel load from annual grasses. Mowing the annual grasses once they dry-out in the spring, preferably before going to seed, reduces the amount of fine fuels during the summer fire season. Repeated mowing over several years should reduce the density of the annual grass as long as mowing occurs before seed set.

Biomass Utilization and Disposal:

Biomass utilization is an alternative to open pile burning or landfill disposal. It would result in the use of the natural resource for beneficial purposes such as firewood, wood chips, compost, and other products. If residents cannot find an alternative to burning, then proper burning procedures should be followed.

Classic Interface

Structures abut native vegetation with a clear line of separation between structures and the wildland vegetation along roads and fences. The fuels do not extend into the developed areas.

Defensible space

Defensible space is defined as a minimum of a 30-foot area around houses and other structures where vegetation has been significantly modified or removed. The purpose of creating defensible space is to reduce the risk of losing homes and other property improvements to a wildfire (Smith and Adams, 1991).

Communities with structures directly adjacent to wildland vegetation, as in the intermix or rural interface conditions, are especially at risk from wildfires that can spread quickly through the wildland fuels, threatening homes and lives. Clearing and reducing fuels around homes and other structures reduces the risk of loss from a wildfire.

Fuelbreaks:

A fuelbreak is a strategically located strip of land, on which a cover of dense, heavy, or flammable vegetation has been permanently changed to one of lower fuel volume or reduced flammability. Fuelbreak construction may include removing, controlling and possible replacing highly flammable vegetation with more fire resistant species. Ridge top fuelbreaks should have continuous length and width, which requires long-range planning. Fuels are reduced, ladder fuel is removed, and the canopy closure is reduced in fuelbreak treatments.

Primary fuelbreaks flank ridge tops and valley bottoms and are used to control large fires. The recommended minimum width is 300 feet.

Secondary fuelbreaks are used to break down large forested areas along roads, drainage ridges, communities and other valuable resources to support fires suppression into areas of less than 1,000 acres.

Fuel Reduction Treatment

This treatment involves strategically locating blocks of land near communities where flammable vegetation has been permanently changed to one of lower fuel volume or reduced flammability. Fuel reduction treatments may also involve replacement of highly flammable vegetation with less flammable or more fire resistant species.

Greenstrips

Greenstrips are irrigated or usually non-irrigated bands of open space on private or public land (at least a minimum of 300 feet wide) that serve as a buffer zone between wildlands and adjacent urban development to promote safer environments. These areas are usually seeded to establish vegetation that is relatively fire resistant or burns slowly and with shortened flame lengths. Seedings also decrease soil erosion and prevent invasion of noxious weeds and other aggressive plants such as cheatgrass and Russian knapweed.

Intermix Interface

Structures are scattered throughout the wildland, with no clear boundary between the wildland vegetation and the community.

Occluded Interface

This condition is usually within towns and cities where there are small islands of wildland fuels such as parks or open space. There is a clear boundary between the community and the wildland vegetation.

Red Card

The term that indicates an individual is qualified to fight wildland fires. The Red Card system was developed for individual firefighter qualifications, and is part of a fire qualifications management system used by many state and all federal wildland fire management agencies

Rural Interface

Clusters of structures such as ranches or summer homes are widely spaced, sometimes more than a mile apart. The rural homes are surrounded by the wildland vegetation, with no clear line of separation between the fuels and homes.

Shaded fuelbreaks

A shaded fuelbreak is created by altering surface fuels and increasing the height of the base of the live crown and opening the canopy by removing trees. This type of fuelbreak spans a wide range of understory and overstory prescriptions and methods of creation through the use of manual or mechanical operations, and prescribed fires.

A fuelbreak network system could be used to protect critical watersheds while more remote areas might have narrower fuelbreaks that might serve as anchor points for prescribed fires. A fuelbreak strategy can be effective even if fuelbreaks are not connected.

Scientific Plant Names