ABSTRACT
Prescribed fire tends to replace other techniques for rangeland vegetation management and research into its benefits and uses have increased for several reasons. Knowledge of fire behavior is essential to successful use of fire in rangeland management. As a fire proceeds across a landscape, it responds to characteristics of weather, topography, and fuel. Fire control requires that unplanned increases in fire intensity and rate of spread be held to a minimum. Roughness of the land surface influences weather generally and causes day-to-day variation in weather, and hence in fire behavior. The horizontal and vertical continuity of fuel influences fire behavior. Few precise descriptions exist of extremely complex weather-topography-fuel interactions that occurred in a particular fire behavior and that caused certain ecological effects. Planning for a prescribed fire begins with accumulating knowledge about the ecological conditions to be changed or perpetuated, processes involved with the fire itself, and the possible objectives in using fire.
