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Author(s):
Ginny A. Marshall, Rodman Linn, Marlin J. Holmes, Scott L. Goodrick, Dan K. Thompson, A. Hemmati
Year Published:

Cataloging Information

Topic(s):
Fire Behavior
Simulation Modeling
Fuels

NRFSN number: 25699
FRAMES RCS number: 67791
Record updated:

Many wildfire behaviour modeling studies have focused on fires during extreme conditions, where the dominant processes are resolved and smaller-scale variations have less influence on fire behaviour. As such, wildfire behaviour models typically perform well for these cases. However, they can struggle in marginal conditions (e.g. low-intensity fire) as small-scale variations significantly influence fire physics at scales below grid resolution. In an effort to generalize wildfire behaviour models and improve their overall performance, we have developed a new set of equations for wet and dry fuel to capture the finer-scale sub-grid variations in temperature and moisture. We explore the behaviour of these equations in simple scenarios ranging from high- to low-intensity fire. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance against observations of surface fire. In all cases the proposed model performs well after peak temperature is reached; however, the rise of fuel temperature at the onset of combustion is faster than expected.

Citation

Marshall, Ginny A.; Linn, R.R.; Holmes, M.; Goodrick, S.; Thompson, D.K.; Hemmati, A. 2023. Capturing sub-grid temperature and moisture variations for wildland fire modeling. Environmental Modelling & Software 164:105678. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2023.105678

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