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Canopy Fuel

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Encyclopedia of Wildfires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires

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Synonyms

Crown fuels

Definition

Burnable biomass above 2 m from the ground

Acronyms

CBH canopy base height, CBD canopy bulk density, CH crown height, CFL canopy fuel load, CC canopy cover

Introduction

The canopies of vegetation communities consist of the suspended biomass of interacting plants and many other life forms creating a diverse collection of biological physiognomies and spatial structures (Lowman and Rinker 2004). In ecology, the canopy is defined as the aboveground plant community, which consists of various plant crowns (Campbell and Norman 1989); however, in wildland fuel science, canopy fuels are live and dead biomass above 2 m from the ground surface (Fig. 1). Interestingly, foliage is only a small fraction of the total canopy biomass; the woody material in tree boles can account for over 80% of the total canopy biomass in forests (Keane 2015). Vegetation canopies are incredibly diverse in the types and spatial arrangements of aerial biomass that comprise canopy fuels,...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, Missoula, MT, USA

    Robert E. Keane

Authors
  1. Robert E. Keane
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Correspondence to Robert E. Keane .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. United States Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA

    Samuel L. Manzello

Section Editor information

  1. USDA Forest Service, RMRS Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, Missoula, MT, USA

    Sara McAllister

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Keane, R.E. (2019). Canopy Fuel. In: Manzello, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Wildfires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51727-8_245-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51727-8_245-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51727-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51727-8

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