"CFS Conifer" in Base BDA - What is this exactly?

[Dominic Cyr]

Hi everyone, 

I was looking for documentation about the "CFS Conifer" parameter of the BDASpeciesParameter table (example below) but I couln't find any.

Does that apply to all susceptible conifers? What aspects of the simulated dynamics does that affect?

Can anyone provide me with information about this or direct me where I can find it please?

Thanks a lot

Dominic

BDASpeciesParameters

>>                                        Susceptibility  

>>Species  MinorHost  2ndHost  MajorHost  Class3   Class2   Class1 CFS

>>Name     Age        Age      Age        Age      Age      Age Conifer

>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

abiebals 0 20 30 0 20    40 yes

piceglau 0 20 70 30 60    999 yes

acersacc 20 60 999 20 60    999 no

[Brian Miranda]

Hi Dominic,

The "CFS Conifer" flag is used to allow interaction with the Dynamic Fire and Fuels extensions.  Species that are marked as conifers in this way in the BDA extension are recorded as dead conifers when they are killed.  The number of dead conifer cohorts is used by the fuels extension to calculate a "Dead Conifer Index" which can influence the fuel spread calculated in the fire extension.  See the "Dead Conifer Index" in the Dynamic Fuel System User Guide for more details.

We are working on the documentation for an upcoming new release of the Base BDA extension, so I will be sure to make information about this input more clear in the BDA Users Guide.  I already know that the parameter will be changing names to be more generically a flag for a "Specialty dead fuel class" because we do not intend either the BDA or DFFS extensions to be specifically tied to the Canadian fuels models.  It will still function the same way, but we will just be cleaning up the terminology.

Hope this answers your questions, let me know if anything is still unclear.

Cheers,

-Brian