Background: Pre-fire fuels, topography, and weather influence wildfire behaviour and fire-driven ecosystem carbon loss. However, the pre-fire characteristics that contribute to fire behaviour and effects are often understudied for wildfires because measurements are difficult to obtain.
A deeper understanding of the influence of fine-scale fuel patterns on fire behavior is essential to the design of forest treatments that aim to reduce fire hazard, enhance structural complexity, and increase ecosystem function and resilience. Of particular relevance is the impact of horizontal and vertical forest structure on potential tree torching and large-tree mortality.
Background: Fire research and management applications, such as fire behaviour analysis and emissions modelling, require consistent, highly resolved spatiotemporal information on wildfire growth progression.
Background: Reliable wildfire prediction and efficient controlled burns require a comprehensive understanding of physical mechanisms controlling fire spread behaviour. Earlier studies explored the intermittent nature of free-burning fires, but the influence of flame intermittency on fire spread requires further attention.
As 21st-century climate and disturbance dynamics depart from historic baselines, ecosystem resilience is uncertain. Multiple drivers are changing simultaneously, and interactions among drivers could amplify ecosystem vulnerability to change. Subalpine forests in Greater Yellowstone (Northern Rocky Mountains, USA) were historically resilient to infrequent (100–300 year), severe fire.
Vegetation structure affects the vulnerability of a forest to drought events and wildfires. Management decisions, such as thinning intensity and type of understory treatment, influence competition for water resources and amount of fuel available.
Wildfire sizes and proportions burned with high severity effects are increasing in seasonally dry forests, especially in the western USA. A critical need in efforts to restore or maintain these forest ecosystems is to determine where fuel build-up caused by fire exclusion reaches thresholds that compromise resilience to fire.
Aim: Wildfire activity in recent years is notable not only for an expansion of total area burned but also for large, single-day fire spread events that pose challenges to ecological systems and human communities.
There are many parts of a wildfire and wildland firefighters use specific terminology to describe each part. Fire Facts: What are? Parts of a Wildfire
There are three basic types of forest fires: ground, surface, and crown. Fire Facts: What are? Types of Fire