Quantifying Litter Bed Ignitability: Comparison of a Laboratory and Field Method

Fire

article

Jamie E. Burton¹  Alexander I. Filkov¹  Bianca J. Pickering¹  Trent D. Penman¹  Jane G. Cawson¹ 

[1] School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Melbourne

关键词: fire behaviour;    fire risk;    firebrands;    spot fires;    ignition;    litter beds;    surface fuel;    wildfires;   

DOI  :  10.3390/fire6010024

学科分类：环境科学（综合）

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Understanding the conditions when litter beds will ignite from firebrands is critical for predicting spot fire occurrence. Such research is either field- or laboratory-based, with limited analysis to compare the approaches. We examined the ability of a laboratory method to represent field-scale ignitability. The laboratory method involved collecting litter-bed samples concurrently with the field experiments and then reconstructing and burning the litter-bed samples in the laboratory. We measured the number of successful and sustained ignitions in the laboratory (n = 5) and field (n = 30 attempts). The laboratory and field results were more similar for successful (bias = 0.05) than sustained ignitions (bias = 0.08). Wind, fuel structure (in the field) and near-surface fuel moisture influenced the differences between the methods. Our study highlights the value in conducting simultaneous laboratory and field experiments to understand the scalability of laboratory studies. For our ignitability method, our results suggest that small-scale laboratory experiments could be an effective substitute for field experiments in forests where litter beds are the dominant fuel layer and where the cover of the near-surface fuel is low.

【 授权许可】

CC BY