What is fire regime condition class (FRCC) and what role does it play in LANDFIRE?
Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) is a standardized, interagency tool for determining the degree to which current landscape conditions have departed from historical reference condition vegetation and disturbance regimes. Assessing FRCC can help guide management objectives and assist in setting priorities for ecological restoration. Historically, the coarse-scale FRCC maps produced in 2002 at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory illustrated the utility of FRCC for strategic hazardous fuel reduction planning; however, these data lacked the spatial resolution needed to accurately plan and prioritize projects. The interest in and acceptance of the FRCC concept, combined with the limitations of the coarse-scale FRCC maps, served as a catalyst for both the LANDFIRE Project and for the development of methods for field-based, local assessments of FRCC. FRCC is an important product of LANDFIRE (note: LANDFIRE will not map disturbance regimes but will map the departure in vegetation conditions
