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Backing Fire: Fire that is moving into the wind (See heading and flanking fire).
Blackline: Refers to fuels that have burned, either intentionally or not. Many prescribed fire and wildfire suppression techniques are based on the concept of blackline as a barrier to fire spread.
Controlled Burn: Prescribed fire, but without a written plan. Safe controlled burning, rather than prescribed burns, is usually the goal in community-based fire management programs of developing countries.
Escape: A prescribed fire that burns outside of a pre-determined treatment area. Agencies and organizations that use fire as a management tool often track the percentage of escapes as a measure of their fire programs' proficiency.
Fire-dependent Ecosystems: Ecosystems in which fire is essential and the species have evolved adaptations to respond positively to fire and to facilitate fire’s spread. Often called fire-adapted or fire-maintained ecosystems.
Fire-independent Ecosystems: Ecosystems in which fire normally plays little or no role. They are too cold, too wet or too dry to burn.
Fire-influenced Ecosystems: Includes vegetation types that lie in the transition zone between fire-dependent ecosystems and fire-sensitive or fire-independent ecosystems.
Fire-sensitive Ecosystems: Ecosystems that have not evolved with fire as a significant, recurring process. Species lack adaptations to respond to fire and mortality is high even when fire intensity is low. Vegetation structure and composition tend to inhibit ignition and fire spread.
Fire Management: The range of possible technical decisions and actions directed toward preventing, detecting, controlling, or using fire in a given landscape to meet specific goals and objectives. Fire management can be thought of as a triangle with the legs being prevention, suppression, and fire use.
Fire Regime: A set of recurring conditions of fire that characterizes a given ecosystem. A specific range of frequency, fire behavior, severity, timing of burn, size of burn, fire spread pattern, and pattern and distribution of burn circumscribe those conditions.
An ecologically appropriate fire regime is one that maintains the viability of the ecosystem. It is not necessarily a natural fire regime.
An altered or undesirable fire regime is one that has been modified by human activities, such as fire suppression and prevention, excessive burning, inappropriate burning, or landscape fragmentation, to the extent that the current fire regime negatively affects the viability of desired ecosystems and the sustainability of products and services that the ecosystem provides.
Flanking Fire: Fire that is moving perpendicular to the wind (See heading and backing fire).
Heading Fire: Fire that is moving with the wind (See backing and flanking fire).
Integrated Fire Management: An approach to addressing the problems and issues posed by both unwanted and desirable fires within the context of the natural environments and socio-economic systems in which they occur, by evaluating and balancing the relative risks posed by fire with the beneficial or necessary ecological and economic roles that it may play in a given conservation area, landscape or region.
Ladder Fuels: Fuels, such as branches, shrubs or an understory layer of trees, which allow a fire to spread from the ground to the canopy.
Prescribed Fire: The application of carefully controlled burns under defined fuel and weather conditions to meet land management or ecological objectives involving a written plan. Effective prescribed burning requires intensive training, an understanding of fire behavior, fuels, weather, topography and fire effects, along with considerable experience.
Red Card: An illustration of an individual’s current wildland fire qualifications. Part of the fire qualifications management system used by many U.S. state and all U.S. federal wildland fire management agencies.
Wildfire: Fire, naturally caused or caused by humans, that is not meeting land management objectives.
Wildland Fire Use: The management of unplanned wildfire to obtain beneficial outcomes that lead toward reaching management goals. The level of management may range from observation and monitoring to more aggressive containment within specified zones.
