Brush: A collective term that refers to stands of vegetation dominated by shrubby, woody plants, or low growing trees.

Brush Fire: A fire burning mostly shrubs, brush and scrub growth.

Crown Fire: The movement of fire through the crowns of trees or shrubs separate from the surface fire.

Dead Fuels: Fuels with no living tissue, such as dead limbs or dead standing trees or shrubs.

Defensible Space: An area either natural or manmade where material capable of causing a fire to spread has been treated, cleared, reduced, or changed to act as a barrier between an advancing wildland fire and the loss to life, property, or resources. In practice, "defensible space" is defined as an area a minimum of 100 feet around a structure that is cleared of flamable brush or vegetation. Defensible Space not only helps to defend your home, it also provides a safer situation for the Fire Crews sent to defend your home.

Duff: The layer of decomposing organic materials lying below the litter layer of freshly fallen twigs, needles, and leaves and immediately above the top soil.

Fine Fuels: Fast-drying fuels, generally grasses, these fuels readily ignite and are rapidly consumed by fire when dry.

Fire Season: 1) Period(s) of the year during which wildland fires are likely to occur. 2) A legally enacted time during which burning activities are regulated by state or local authority.

Fuel Reduction: removal of fuels through mastication, ground work, and or burning or to reduce the likelihood of damage to life and or property by wildland fire.

Ladder Fuels: Fuels which provide vertical paths for fire, thereby allowing fire to carry from surface fuels into the crowns of trees or shrubs with relative ease.

Red Flag Warning: Term used by fire weather forecasters to alert forecast users to critical fire weather pattern.

Slash: Debris left after logging, pruning, thinning or brush cutting; includes logs, chips, bark, branches, stumps and broken understory trees or brush.

Snag: A standing dead tree or part of a dead tree from which at least the smaller branches have fallen.

Suppression: All the work of extinguishing or containing a fire, beginning with its discovery.

Surface Fuels: Loose surface litter on the soil surface, normally consisting of fallen leaves or needles, twigs, bark, cones, and small branches that have not yet decayed enough to lose their identity; also grasses, forbs, low and medium shrubs, tree seedlings, heavier branchwood, downed logs, and stumps interspersed with or partially replacing the litter.

Wildland Fire: Any nonstructure fire that occurs in the wildland.

Wildland Urban Interface: The line, area or zone where structures and other human development meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland or vegetative fuels.