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Type: Journal Article
Author(s): Ginny A. Marshall; Rodman R. Linn; Marlin J. Holmes; Scott L. Goodrick; Dan K. Thompson; A. Hemmati
Publication Date: 2023

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.

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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.

Cataloging Information

Topics:
Fire Behavior    Fuels    Models
Regions:
Alaska    California    Eastern    Great Basin    Hawaii    Northern Rockies    Northwest    Rocky Mountain    Southern    Southwest    International    National
Keywords:
  • closure
  • fire intensity
  • fuel moisture
  • multiphysics modeling
  • subgrid
  • wildfire
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 67791