Camp Swift Fire Experiment 2014: Field fuel samples

This data publication contains fuel loading, fuel consumption, fuel moisture, and surface-area-volume ratios for vegetation samples collected as part of a prescribed fire research campaign conducted at the Camp Swift Military Base in Bastrop County, Texas on January 15, 2014. The Camp Swift Fire Experiment 2014 consisted of three fires ignited in burn blocks of dimensions 100 meters (m) by 100 m on January 15, 2014. Fires were ignited on relatively flat areas of grass vegetation in moderate winds. Fuel samples were collected using a combination of line intersect inventory, and clip plot methods. Fuel moisture samples were collected, weighed and oven dried to determine fuel moisture content by fuelbed component immediately prior to ignition. To avoid disturbing vegetation in the burn unit, samples were collected entirely outside the prescribed fire perimeters in areas determined to be most analogous to the interior of the burn units, prior to the burns. At least 15 destructive post-fire plots were established within each burn unit primarily in areas wherein an uninterrupted head fire was observed during the research burns. Post-burn plots were sampled to quantify consumption of fuels within each burn site. Sampled fuels required additional processing at a different location and were shipped for analysis. Fuel moisture sampling was conducted within 30 minutes of ignition for each burn unit. This collection time was based on the variability of the moisture content of the particular grass fuels along with required precision for these research goals.
The objective of the research burns was to create a dataset comprised of ground based and remote sensing measurements. Consumption of fuel during wildland fire is the basic process that leads to heat generation and emissions, driving fire behavior and accounting for fire effects. This dataset provides measurements for the evaluation and development of fuel and fuel consumption models and other fire models that require fuel loading and fuel consumption as inputs. This dataset was not specifically collected to derive a continuous fuel map from remote sensing data and consequently there was limited integration of remote sensing and fuel sampling at Camp Swift. Nonetheless, the data contained in this data package might aid in prescribing fuel properties to fuel polygons of the three Camp Swift burn blocks.
A summary of the Camp Swift project can be found in the full data download (\Supplements\ CampSwiftFireExperiment2014_Project_Overview.pdf). A United States Forest Service ArcGIS Online interactive website is also developed to describe the study and examine the integrated data quality for the Camp Swift effort (see cross reference below). Finally, a document detailing the procedures used to set up the burn blocks can be found in the full data download (\Supplements\CampSwiftFireExperiment2014_BurnBlockDesign.pdf). Data were originally published on 09/26/2018. Minor metadata updates made on 01/08/2020.