Fuel is the most complex of all the drivers of fire. There are as many fuel types as there are plants, and there is increasing awareness of the importance of not just the nature and amount of fuel, but also its structure. In Victoria fuel hazard ratings have been developed to represent the risk posed by different parts (strata) of vegetation, such as litter, understorey and bark fuels. Researchers develop models to predict fuel amount or fuel hazard based on climate, terrain, soil. time since fire and other factors.
This data is based on a fuel hazard model, to learn more about the methodology behind this model read:
McColl-Gausden, S.C. et al. (2019) Climate and edaphic gradients predict variation in wildland fuel hazard in south-eastern Australia. Ecography, doi.org/10.1111/ecog.04714
This data shows us the average fuel hazard conditions across Victoria. Higher values represent greater fire risk from fuel amount and structure. The fuel hazard shown here is a complex function of multiple climate variables, bulk soil density and time since fire. Maps show the spatial pattern of fuel hazard and are restricted to areas of native vegetation that have at least one mapped fire on record. Graphs show the pattern of fuel hazard over time for different regions. These fuel hazard model outputs are available from 2000 onwards. We use a fire year rather than a calendar year e.g. the 2020 fire year runs from July 2019 to June 2020. Data represent fuel hazard leading into that fire year.
Hover over the map and graphs to get more info. Click on the range to see changes between years.