| |
The following Natural Community Descriptions section serves as a general guide for fire management assessment of natural habitats or plant communities of varying structural stages in Brevard County that are in some way affected by fire in the EEL Program's site portfolio. All 15 communities were identified by EEL land managers and are described in general terms according to the Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI) community descriptions as well as from other sources (refer to appendix H for species scientific names index). The communities are then categorized by the structural stage common on EEL sites. Stages are described using four structural layers (Overstory, Mid Story, Groundcover and Litter/Duff layer). Soils are discussed in the descriptive section as well.
Many plant communities in Florida go through different 'stages' depending on the amount of time since they were last burned. Fire can behave differently from one stage to another within the same community due to the amount of vegetative fuel build-up since the last fire. The management protocol necessary to return a community back to its optimal stage is also different from one stage to another. It is therefore more accurate to divide plant community descriptions into different stages instead of lumping them all together into a single description. There are however many communities that only go through a single stage since they are not affected by fire as much as the multi-staged communities. All communities have an optimal stage. This stage consists of vegetative conditions that are similar to those that existed pre-settlement. The optimal stage in some communities is related to the survival of one or two Threatened or Endangered species that inhabit that community. The community stages described in this manual all exist on EEL properties and have been identified by EEL land managers and from other sources.
Representative photographs of each community stage are provided. Fuel depth and thickness for each photograph is indicated by a 6-foot density board marked in 1-foot increments. Users of this guide should compare the general or average fuel bed in the landscape they are observing to those shown in the guide. Users should also compare the fuel complex description elements to verify a "best match".
Fuel descriptions were matched (best fit) to the 13 Fire Behavior Prediction System (FBPS) fuel models (Anderson, 1982). Fuel models (FM) are divided into 4 groups - grasses, brush, timber and logging slash. These models are aids in predicting fire behavior and rating fire danger. They use descriptions of fuel properties to calculate fire danger indices and fire behavior. Often multiple fuel models are used for selective fire behavior parameters. Local knowledge integrating community stage fuels and typically observed fire behavior is noted. Within Brevard County's vegetation, only eight fuel models are represented.
A relative fire behavior table is generated to compare general fire behavior for each stage category. Specific weather and fuel moisture parameters were used (as recommended in Anderson) to run the Behave model (Andrews, 1986) for each fuel model selected. The following table lists the specific
|
|
