Tecnobosque knowledge layer
Wildfire Field Guides.
Short technical guides for reading wildfire reports correctly: what the numbers mean, how evidence changes, and which terms should never be treated as simple severity scores.
Understand the incident before interpreting it.
Wildfire reports contain operational terms that look simple—containment, acreage, spotting, mop-up—but each has a specific meaning and a timestamp. These guides connect official terminology with real incident examples from Tecnobosque records.
Wildfire containment percentage
Why 50% contained does not mean half the fire is extinguished, how perimeter containment works, and why the percentage can change.
Read the containment guide →
Why wildfire acreage changes
Actual growth, infrared mapping, sensor aircraft, perimeter refinement and source timing can all change published acreage.
Read the acreage guide →
Spotting, embers and spot fires
How airborne firebrands create new ignitions beyond the main perimeter and why spotting can cross roads, rivers and control lines.
Read the spotting guide →
Mop-up and residual heat
Why crews keep working after the main flame front passes, and why patrol and hot-spot work can continue at high containment.
Read the mop-up guide →Field guide 05
Evacuation warning vs order
California official definitions, related alert states and why every evacuation statement needs a timestamp.
Read the evacuation guide →Field guide 06
Red Flag Warning vs Fire Weather Watch
Timing, confidence, local criteria and why critical fire weather is not the same thing as an active wildfire.
Read the fire-weather guide →Field guide 07
Fireline vs Control Line
Why control line is the broader term and fireline is the mineral-soil portion constructed to interrupt fuels.
Read the line guide →Field guide 08 · 2026 terminology
Direct Extinguishment vs Indirect Confinement
The updated federal wildfire strategy labels and how they relate to direct and indirect attack terminology.
Read the strategy guide →Field guide 09 · California technology
What is FIRIS?
Aircraft, airborne sensors, WIFIRE modeling and Next-Gen SCOUT in California wildfire intelligence.
Read the FIRIS guide →Field guide 10
Contained vs Controlled
Why 100% containment does not necessarily mean suppression work is finished.
Read the status guide →Field guide 11
Forward Progress Stopped
Why stopping the advancing edge is an operational milestone, not the same thing as containment or an all-clear.
Read the forward-progress guide →Field guide 12 · Fire behavior
Flame Length vs Fireline Intensity
One is an observable length; the other is a heat-release rate. Learn how they relate and when not to treat them as interchangeable.
Read the intensity guide →Field guide 13 · Fire behavior
Rate of Spread
Forward spread, units, wind, slope and why mapped acreage growth is not automatically a spread-rate measurement.
Read the spread-rate guide →Field guide 14 · Fire geometry
Head, Flank and Rear
How the fastest, lateral and slowest portions of the perimeter are defined—and why a wind shift can change their roles.
Read the parts-of-fire guide →Field guide 15 · Fire type
Surface vs Crown vs Ground Fire
Where each fire type burns, how fire moves between fuel layers, and the difference between passive, active and independent crown fire.
Read the fire-types guide →Field guide 16 · Fire weather
Pyrocumulus vs Pyrocumulonimbus
How fire-driven convection forms cloud, when it develops into thunderstorm-scale pyroCb, and why pyroCu alone does not prove plume domination.
Read the fire-cloud guide →Field guide 17 · Crown fire
Torching vs Crowning
Why one tree or a small group torching is not automatically the same as sustained crown-fire spread.
Read the crown-behavior guide →Field guide 18 · Extreme behavior
Fire Whirl vs Fire Tornado
How fire-driven vortices form, why most fire whirls are not tornadoes, and when rotation becomes exceptional.
Read the vortex guide →Field guide 19 · Smoke
AQI vs PM2.5
Why particle concentration and the EPA air-quality index are different quantities—and how they connect to smoke tools.
Read the smoke guide →Field guide 20 · Fuels
Ladder Fuels
How vertical fuel continuity helps surface fire reach tree crowns and why arrangement matters in defensible space.
Read the ladder-fuels guide →Field guide 21 · Fire effects
Fire Intensity vs Burn Severity
Why energy release during combustion is not the same thing as the post-fire alteration of soil, fuels and vegetation.
Read the severity guide →Field guide 22 · Smoke
HEPA vs MERV 13
Portable air cleaners, central HVAC filtration, PM2.5 and why clean-air delivery matters as much as the filter label.
Read the filtration guide →Field guide 23 · Indoor air
CADR vs CFM vs ACH
Airflow, effective clean-air delivery and room turnover—and how the three quantities connect in smoke planning.
Read the clean-air metrics guide →Field guide 24 · WUI
Home Hardening vs Defensible Space
Why modifying the structure and managing surrounding fuels are different but complementary resilience strategies.
Read the WUI guide →Field guide 25 · GIS evidence
Hotspot vs Fire Perimeter
Why a satellite thermal detection is not the exact fire edge and why pixel footprints must stay separate from perimeter geometry.
Read the mapping guide →Field guide 26 · Sources
CAL FIRE vs InciWeb vs NASA FIRMS
Which source answers which question—and why timestamps and provenance matter when official values disagree.
Read the source guide →Field guide 27 · Satellite radiometry
FRP vs Fireline Intensity
Why satellite radiative power in MW is not the same quantity as line-based fire intensity in kW/m.
Read the FRP guide →Field guide 28 · Satellite sensing
MODIS vs VIIRS
How active-fire resolution, acquisition time and sensor identity change the interpretation of wildfire hotspot data.
Read the sensor guide →Field guide 29 · GIS evidence
Fire Perimeter vs Burned Area
Why the outer fire boundary can contain unburned islands and why polygon acreage is not always identical to truly burned surface.
Read the perimeter guide →Field guide 30 · Smoke
Smoke Plume vs Ground-Level PM2.5
Why smoke visible from satellite may remain aloft and not match breathing-level particle concentrations.
Read the plume guide →Field guide 31 · Fire weather
Fuel Moisture vs Relative Humidity
Why moisture in the air and moisture in fuels are related drivers but different physical quantities.
Read the moisture guide →
Read a wildfire map, step by step
A useful map analysis starts with a clear question. Are you measuring distance, comparing observations or describing an already burned landscape? Follow the relevant steps below, and keep the source, observation time and measurement assumptions beside your result.
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Check what the distance represents. Use Wildfire map scale and distance to work through ratio scales, scale bars and screenshot resizing. Record whether you measured a straight line or a route; they answer different questions.
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Keep terrain units consistent. Read Slope percent vs degrees before comparing terrain values. The worked examples separate horizontal distance from distance along a slope and show why a percentage is not an angle.
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Match distance to an observation interval. Use the example in Wildfire rate of spread explained to calculate an interval average and explore uncertain timestamps. A historical average does not establish a future arrival time.
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Check what the satellite actually observed. Follow How to use NASA FIRMS wildfire hotspots to distinguish acquisition time from the time you downloaded the data. Keep hotspot observations separate from perimeter and ignition claims.
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Read the legend before counting severity classes. Use How to read burn severity maps to distinguish mapped classes from masked or missing data. State the denominator when reporting an area percentage.
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Check coverage before treating absence as evidence. Read Why a fire may be missing from MTBS before building an incident list. A dataset selected for one research purpose may not represent every fire.
Keep a reproducible record: save the source URL, observation date and time zone, map scale or measurement method, units, and any excluded or missing data. These guides support interpretation and research; use local emergency authorities for current warnings and evacuation instructions.
How Tecnobosque reads changing wildfire information.
The same discipline used in the field guides is applied to developing incident records.
See the concepts inside real incidents.
The field guides are the permanent knowledge layer; the fire records show how those concepts appear in changing incidents.