NWCG Glossary of Wildland Fire, PMS 205

Overview

The NWCG Glossary of Wildland Fire provides an extensive listing of approved terms and definitions used by the NWCG community. It contains terms commonly used by NWCG in the areas of wildland fire and incident management and is not intended to list all terms used by NWCG groups and member agencies. The NWCG has directed that all committee and subgroup product glossaries be contained within the NWCG Glossary of Wildland Fire to maintain definition consistency and clarity among documents.

Comments, questions, and recommendations shall be submitted to the appropriate agency program manager assigned to the Data Standards and Terminology Board (DSTB).

NWCG Glossary of Wildland Fire, PMS 205 (Quick View)

EDG Explorer is a database platform used for managing NWCG Glossary terms. The following table is a quick view of the terms found in EDG. More detailed information such as rules, documentation, and term relationships may be viewed in EDG Explorer.

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Title	Steward	Status	Definition
fire climate	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	Composite pattern of weather elements over time that affect fire behavior in a given region.
fire climax	FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	Plant community maintained by periodic fires.
Fire Code
fire crew	IOSC Incident Operations Subcommittee	Approved	General term for two or more firefighters organized to work as a unit.
fire crew work formation	IOSC Incident Operations Subcommittee	Approved	Standard crew arrangement used for fireline construction in direct or indirect attack; consists of line locator, line cutters, rakers, torch operators, and mop up crew.
fire danger	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	Sum of constant danger and variable danger factors affecting the inception, spread, and resistance to control, and subsequent fire damage; often expressed as an index.
fire danger continuum	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	The range of possible values for a fire danger index or component, given a set of NFDRS parameters and weather input.
fire danger index	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	A relative number indicating the severity of wildland fire danger as determined from burning conditions and other variable factors of fire danger.
fire danger rating	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	A fire management system that integrates the effects of selected fire danger factors into one or more qualitative or numerical indices of current protection needs.
fire danger rating area	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	A geographic area of relatively homogenous climate, fuels and topography, tens of thousands of acres in size, within which the fire danger can be assumed to be uniform. The basic on-the-ground unit for which unique fire management decisions are made based on fire danger ratings. Weather is represented by one or more NFDRS weather stations.
Fire Danger Rating Operating Plan	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	A guide to collection, communication, and application of fire danger ratings at the local level.
Fire Danger Rating Pocket Card for Firefighter Safety	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	A communication aid designed to help firefighters develop an awareness of the local fire situation by providing a visual reference to fire danger rating.
Fire Danger Rating System	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	The complete program necessary to produce and apply fire danger ratings, including data collection, data processing, fire danger modeling, communications, and data storage.
fire death	RMC Risk Management Committee	Approved	Fire casualty which is fatal or becomes fatal within one year of the fire.
fire dependent	FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	Plants and vegetation communities which have evolved adaptations such as a reliance on fire as a disturbance agent, protection as a species against the effects of wildland fire, or even a strengthening or enhancement by it.
fire detection	IOSC Incident Operations Subcommittee	Approved	Act or system of discovering and locating fires.
fire diagram	WFISC Wildland Fire Investigation Subcommittee	Approved	A near scale depiction of the scene based on measurements and data.
fire discovery	DMC Data Management Committee	Approved	The act of determining that a fire exists; does not include determining its location.
fire discovery date time	FRSC Fire Reporting Subcommittee	Approved	The date the fire was confirmed to exist or was reported as discovered
fire discovery time	FRSC Fire Reporting Subcommittee	Approved	The time of day the fire was confirmed to exist or was reported as discovered.
fire district	IOSC Incident Operations Subcommittee	Archived	A rural or suburban fire organization, usually tax supported, that maintains fire companies and apparatus.
fire duty	IOSC Incident Operations Subcommittee	Archived	Actual physical engagement in firefighting service as distinguished from staff work at headquarters or maintenance division; work at an individual fire done by an individual firefighter or by a company.
fire ecology	FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	The study of the effects of fire on living organisms and their environment.
fire edge	FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	The boundary of a fire at a given moment.
fire education	CEPC Communication, Education, and Prevention Committee	Approved	Activities to change behaviors and attitudes about fire ecology, wildland fire and the role of fire in natural resource management. Defines the purposes for actions that provide information about and improve understanding of wildland fire.
fire effects	FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	The physical, biological, and ecological impacts of fire on the environment.
fire environment	FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee, FWS Fire Weather Subcommittee	Approved	The surrounding conditions, influences, and modifying forces of topography, fuel, and weather that determine fire behavior.
fire frequency	FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee, FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	A general term referring to the recurrence of fire in a given area over time.
fire front	FBSC Fire Behavior Subcommittee	Approved	The part of a fire within which continuous flaming combustion is taking place. Unless otherwise specified, the fire front is assumed to be the leading edge of the fire perimeter. In ground fires, the fire front may be mainly smoldering combustion.
fire guard	IOSC Incident Operations Subcommittee	Archived	A general term for a firefighter, lookout, patrol, prevention guard, or other person directly employed for prevention and/or detection and suppression of fires.
fire hazard	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	A fuel complex, defined by volume, type condition, arrangement, and location, that determines the degree of ease of ignition and of resistance to control.
fire hazard index	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	A numerical rating for specific fuel types, indicating the relative probability of fires starting and spreading, and the probable degree of resistance to control; similar to burning index, but without effects of wind speed.
fire hazardous areas	FBSC Fire Behavior Subcommittee	Approved	Those wildland areas where the combination of vegetation, topography, weather, and the threat of fire to life and property create difficult and dangerous problems.
fire history	WFISC Wildland Fire Investigation Subcommittee	Approved	A general term referring to the historic fire occurrence of a given geographic area.
fire initial action time	FRSC Fire Reporting Subcommittee	Approved	The time that initial response action was taken by the first resources to arrive at a wildfire or wildland fire use incident.
fire injury	RMC Risk Management Committee, IBC Incident Business Committee	Approved	Injury suffered as the result of a fire that requires (or should require) treatment by a practitioner of medicine within one year of the fire, regardless of whether treatment was actually received.
fire inspector	WFISC Wildland Fire Investigation Subcommittee	Approved	Fire prevention specialist or arson investigator.
fire interval	FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	The number of years between two successive fire events for a given area; also referred to as fire-free interval or fire-return interval.
fire investigation	WFISC Wildland Fire Investigation Subcommittee	Approved	The process of determining the ignition source, materials first ignited, ignition factors, and party responsible for a fire.
fire lane	IPSC Incident and Position Standards Committee	Archived	Cleared path wide enough to permit single-lane vehicular access in a remote area.
fire load	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	The number and size of fires historically experienced on a given unit over a given period (usually one day) at a given index of fire danger.
Fire Load Index	FDSC Fire Danger Subcommittee	Approved	Numerical rating of the maximum effort required to contain all probable fires occurring within a rating area during the rating period.
fire management	IFPC Interagency Fire Planning Committee, FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	All activities for the management of wildland fires to meet land management objectives. Fire management includes the entire scope of activities from planning, prevention, fuels or vegetation modification, prescribed fire, hazard mitigation, fire response, rehabilitation, monitoring and evaluation.
fire management action (event)	NCSC National Coordination System Committee	Approved	An event, responded to and/or managed by the wildland fire management community, which addresses certain activities and responses undertaken by the wildland fire management community in conjunction with existing or potential fire event(s).
fire management area	IFPC Interagency Fire Planning Committee, FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	One or more parcels of land having a common set of fire management objectives.
fire management improvements	FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	All structures built and used primarily for fire management, e.g. lookout towers, lookout cabins, telephone lines, and also firebreaks, fuel breaks, and roads to lookouts.
fire management objective	IFPC Interagency Fire Planning Committee, FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	Planned, measurable result desired from fire protection and use based on land management goals and objectives.
Fire Management Plan	FMB Fire Management Board	Approved	A compilation of goals, objectives, and requirements from the land/resource management planning process necessary to implement wildland fire management decisions.
Fire Management Unit	IFPC Interagency Fire Planning Committee, FUSC Fire Use Subcommittee	Approved	A land area definable by specified management objectives, constraints, topographic features, access, values to be protected, political boundaries, fuel types, major fire regime groups, and other defined elements that set it apart from an adjacent area. The primary purpose of developing Fire Management Units in fire management planning is to assist in organizing information in complex landscapes. A fire management unit may have dominant management objectives and pre-selected strategies assigned to accomplish these objectives.
fire occurrence identifier	GSC Geospatial Subcommittee	Approved	Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) assigned to the spatialrecord.

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National Wildfire Coordinating Group

PMS 205

NWCG Glossary of Wildland Fire, PMS 205

Overview