Vegetation and fuel

The type, structure and arrangement of vegetation across a landscape has a great influence on the spread of fire. From a fire behaviour perspective, the classification of vegetation into broad structural types allows for a direct link to existing fire behaviour models used in Australia.

Vegetation is also referred to as ‘fuel’ in the context of fire behaviour modelling with ‘fuel’ referring to available fine (<6 mm) elements of combustible material.

NBIC Stage 1 had a focus on building an efficient national mapping workflow that is as consistent as possible with the Australian Fire Danger Rating System (AFDRS). The AFDRS National Fuel Map was provided and a derived fuel type data layer was generated. This data is not publicly accessible.