Description:
The product provides the fuel type and parameters following a standard classification of fuels agreed for the project. The final output – fuel classes and static fuel map with the spatial resolution of 1 ha (10 x 10 m) for the Romanian demonstration area (i.e. Mehedinți and Gorj counties). Developer: INCDS (“Marin Drăcea” National Institute for Research and Development in Forestry).
To create the fuel types map, multiple datasets were integrated. First, forested areas were extracted from the most recent digital forest maps, developed at the Forest District level. These maps, with a nominal scale of 1:5000, include all forestry parcels (i.e., forest management units) within the study area. Forest fuel types (e.g., broadleaved, needleleaved) were classified based on the species composition of each parcel. Next, to distinguish between open and closed forests, the Copernicus Tree Cover Density dataset was used (https://land.copernicus.eu/en/products/high-resolution-layer-tree-cover-density/tree-cover-density-2018). This pan-European map provides tree cover density values ranging from 0% to 100% at spatial resolutions of 10 m and 100 m, using data from the reference year 2018.The forest management database also supported the mapping of forest roads, buildings, and certain agricultural and pasture lands managed by forestry services. For mapping the remaining fuel classes, the Land Cover Map of Europe (Malinowski et al., 2020) was employed. This map, based on Sentinel-2 imagery with a 10 m spatial resolution, enabled the automatic classification of land cover classes. These classes were then matched to the predominantly non-forested fuel types found within the study area.
Finally, the fuel models map was generated using the FirEUrisk fuel types crosswalk to the Fire Behavior Fuel Models (FBFM) system, as proposed by Aragoneses et al. (2023).
Malinowski, R., Lewiński, S., Rybicki, M., Gromny, E., Jenerowicz, M., Krupiński, M., Nowakowski, A., Wojtkowski, C., Krupiński, M., Krätzschmar, E., Schauer, P. (2020), Automated Production of a Land Cover/Use Map of Europe Based on Sentinel-2 Imagery
doi:10.3390/rs12213523
Aragoneses, E., García, M., Salis, M., Ribeiro, L. M., & Chuvieco, E. (2023). Classification and mapping of European fuels using a hierarchical, multipurpose fuel classification system. Earth System Science Data, 15(3), 1287–1315. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-1287-2023