Revisiting methods of vegetation fuel mapping

This paper presents methods of multi-scale mapping of vegetation fuels (VFs). It has been developed based on long-term fundamental pyrological (fire/fuel-related) studies in different regions of Russia, which have helped create a detailed VF classification and develop methods for mapping it in forest fire protection. There are examples of assessing the current fire hazard under different classes of dryness according to weather conditions using large-scale VF maps. There is also an example of predicting the spread of a forest fire in a nature reserve using a specially developed and registered software, also providing probable fire characteristics, including fire intensity at the fire edge, which helps to predict the immediate fire effects in the form of mortality probability in birch, pine, larch, and spruce stands by their average diameter.