LANDFIRE's (LF) 2022 Canopy Bulk Density (CBD) describes the mass of available canopy fuel per unit canopy volume that would burn in a crown fire. A spatially explicit map of CBD supplies information used in fire behavior models to determine the spread characteristics of active crown fires across the landscape. CBD for disturbed and non-disturbed areas is determined via a general linear model (GLM) relating Canopy Height (CH) and Canopy Cover (CC) to CBD (Reeves et al 2009). In LF 2022, fuel products are created with LF 2016 Remap vegetation in areas that were un-disturbed in the last ten years.
To designate disturbed areas where CBD is modified, the aggregated Annual Disturbance products from 2013 to 2022 in the Fuel Disturbance (FDist) product are used. All existing disturbances between 2013-2022 are represented in the LF 2022 update, and the products are intended to be used in 2023 (the year of release). The "capable" year terminology used in LF 2020 and LF 2016 Remap is no longer specified, due to reduction in latency from when a disturbance occurs to the release date of fuel products accounting for that disturbance. However, users should still consider adjusting fuel layers for disturbances that occurred after the end of the 2022 fiscal year (after October 1st, 2022) when using the LF 2022 fuel products. Because those changes would not be accounted for. Learn more about LF 2022 at https://landfire.gov/lf_230.php