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Type: Journal Article
Author(s): William J. Reed; Kevin S. McKelvey
Publication Date: 2002

This paper examines the distribution of areas burned in forest fires. Empirical size distributions, derived from extensive fire records, for six regions in North America are presented. While they show some commonalities, it appears that a simple power-law distribution of sizes, as has been suggested by some authors, is too simple to describe the distributions over their full range. A stochastic model for the spread and extinguishment of fires is used to examine conditions for power-law behaviour and deviations from it. The concept of the extinguishment growth rate ratio (EGRR) is developed. A null model with constant EGRR leads to a power-law distribution, but this does not appear to hold empirically for the data sets examined. Some alternative parametric forms for the size distribution are presented, with a four-parameter 'competing hazards' model providing the overall best fit. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

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Citation: Reed, W. J., and K. S. McKelvey. 2002. Power-law behaviour and parametric models for the size-distribution of forest fires. Ecological Modelling 150(3):239-254.

Cataloging Information

Topics:
Regions:
Keywords:
  • Alberta
  • Canada
  • distribution
  • extinguishment growth rate ratio
  • fire area
  • fire management
  • fire size
  • forest management
  • Idaho
  • national forests
  • power-law
  • self-organized criticality
  • size distribution
  • statistical analysis
  • wildfires
Tall Timbers Record Number: 26872Location Status: Not in fileCall Number: Not in FileAbstract Status: Fair use, Okay, Reproduced by permission
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 50288

This bibliographic record was either created or modified by Tall Timbers and is provided without charge to promote research and education in Fire Ecology. The E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database is the intellectual property of Tall Timbers.