CESU 2026 Spring Webinar Lidar-derived Fuels Monitoring

Fuels monitoring data are essential to evaluate wildfire risk, plan management activities and evaluate fuel treatment effects. Terrestrial light detection and ranging (lidar) is a field-based 3D scanning technology with great potential to reduce labore-intensive field measurements and provide new depths of vegetation structure data. To facilitate the integration of terrestrial lidar into fuel monitoring programs, we developed a model and workflow that produces canopy fuel, surface fuel and terrain metrics commonly used in fire behavior and fire risk modeling.