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10.4 Forest and Rural Fire Danger Rating
Authors: Murray DudfieldPublication: NZIF Forestry Handbook, Volume Section 10 – Forest health and protection, pp 4, Dec 2023
Publisher: New Zealand Institute of Forestry
Abstract: To protect life, property and other important values from wildfire forest managers need a thorough understanding of the fire environment, and a reliable means of assessing and forecasting fire danger. A means of reliably evaluating all the factors that influence fire danger is required to aid decision-making. This can be achieved through a functional and operational fire danger rating system tool. In New Zealand, fire danger across a range of vegetative fuel types is assessed using the New Zealand Fire Danger Rating System (NZFDRS). The NZFDRS consists of a number of core modules and is based upon the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS). It has been in use in New Zealand since 1980, when the New Zealand Forest Service adopted the Fire Weather Index (FWI) System module of the CFFDRS. However, the FWI System was never fully adapted to the New Zealand forest and rural fire environment, nor were the other modules of the NZFDRS developed for application in New Zealand (Fogarty et al. 1998). It was only with the re-establishment of a rural fire research programme with Forest Research in 1992 (then the Forest Research Institute) that this process of adapting the CFFDRS for use in New Zealand commenced. This continues to be a key focus of the Forest and Rural Fire Research programme, based at Forest Research in Christchurch.