Analyses to identify and relate trends in wildfire activity to factors such as climate, population, land use or land cover and wildland fire policy are increasingly popular in the United States.

The role of fire-atmosphere coupling on fire behaviour is not well established, and to date few field observations have been made to investigate the interactions between fire spread and fire-induced winds. Therefore, comprehensive field observations are needed to better understand micrometeorological aspects of fire spread.

We present a method and case study to predict and map the likelihood of wildfires spreading to the urban interface through statistical analysis of past fire patterns using 15 000 lines from 677 fires with known ignition points and date and random potential end points on the urban interface of Sydney, Australia.

Results from a laboratory-scale investigation of a fire spreading on the windward face of a triangular-section hill of variable shape with wind perpendicular to the ridgeline are reported. They confirm previous observations that the fire enlarges its lateral spread after reaching the ridgeline, entering the leeward face with a much wider front.

Mechanical fuel treatments are a common pre-fire strategy for reducing wildfire hazard that alters fuel structure by converting live canopy fuels to a compacted layer of dead surface fuels. Current knowledge concerning their effectiveness, however, comes primarily from forest-dominated ecosystems.

Altered fuel conditions coupled with changing climate have disrupted fire regimes of forests historically characterised by high-frequency and low-to-moderate-severity fire. Managers use fuel treatments to abate undesirable fire behaviour and effects.

In this study, WRF-Sfire is coupled with WRF-Chem to construct WRFSC, an integrated forecast system for wildfire behaviour and smoke prediction. WRF-Sfire directly predicts wildfire spread, plume and plume-top heights, providing comprehensive meteorology and fire emissions to chemical transport model WRF-Chem, eliminating the need for an external plume-rise model.

Wildfire can affect soil hydraulic properties, often resulting in reduced infiltration. The magnitude of change in infiltration varies depending on the burn severity. Quantitative approaches to link burn severity with changes in infiltration are lacking.

The increasing extent of wildfires has prompted investigation into alternative fire management approaches to complement the traditional strategies of fire suppression and fuels manipulation. Wildfire prevention through ignition reduction is an approach with potential for success, but ignitions result from a variety of causes.

Current practices for measuring high heat flux in scenarios such as wildland forest fires use expensive, thermopile-based sensors, coupled with mathematical models based on a semi-infinite-length scale. Although these sensors are acceptable for experimental testing in laboratories, high error rates or the need for water cooling limits their applications in field experiments.