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The characteristics and spatial distribution of fuels are critical for assessing fire hazard, fuel consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and other fire effects. However, fuel maps are difficult to generate and update, because many regions of the world lack fuel descriptions or adequate mapped vegetation attributes to assign these fuelbeds spatially across the landscape. This paper presents a process to generate fuel maps for large areas using remotely sensed information and ancillary fuel characteristic data. The Fuel Characteristic Classification System was used to build fuelbeds for South America and predict potential fire hazard using a set of default environmental variables. A land-cover map was combined with a biome map to define 98 fuelbeds, and their parameters were assigned based on information from global datasets and existing Fuel Characteristic Classification System fuelbeds or photo series. The indices of potential surface fire behaviour ranged from 1.32 to 9, whereas indices of potential crown fire and available fuel for combustion had low to medium values (0–6). This paper presents a geospatial fuels map for South America. This map could be used to assess fire hazard, predict fire behaviour under defined environmental conditions or calculate fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It could also be easily updated as new remotely sensed information on vegetation becomes available.
