IdahoPTV Home > Science Trek > Wildfires > Glossary
Wildfires: Glossary
A
- arson
- The crime of deliberately setting a fire with the intent to cause damage
- atmosphere
- The air and other gases surrounding the earth
B
- backfire
- Controlled burn set by firefighters to consume fuel in the path of a wildfire
C
- channels
- The bed of a stream or river
- chemical reaction
- An event which causes a substance to change into a new substance
- converted
- Changed
D
- debris
- Garbage
- deposits
- Materials left - almost as if cast off
- dike
- Earth used for controlling water
E
- ecosystems
- A collection of living organisms and their environment
- elements
- Parts
- embers
- Hot remains of a fire
- endangered
- Threatened or in danger of becoming extinct
F
- fire retardant
- A chemical that suppresses fire
- firebreak
- A strip of ground in the path of the fire, cleared of all vegetation to deprive the fire of fuel
- flammable
- Quick to catch on fire
G
- gullies
- Ditches caused by moving water
H
- habitat
- A place where a living thing exists
- horizontally
- Level with the ground
- hotshots
- Crews of highly trained wildland firefighters who work on dangerous, difficult fires
- humidity
- Moist air
I
- ignited
- To set on fire
M
- management objective
- Long range plan
P
- Paleozoic Era
- Between 251 million to 542 million years ago
- petrified
- Changed to stone
- phenomena
- Events
- prescribed
- Planned
R
- rangeland
- Grassland or land where animals graze
- rehabilitating
- To repair or return to original
S
- Smokejumpers
- Firefighters who parachute out of planes into remote fire areas
- stabilize
- To make firm or steady
- steppe
- Prairie or grassland
- suppress
- To stop or slow down
- sustain
- Support
T
- tilled
- Plowed
- topography
- Features of the land, hills, mountains, valleys - highs and lows
- trench
- Ditch
V
- velocity
- Speed or change in direction
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