Citation

Ottmar RD, Hudak AT, Prichard SJ, Wright CS, Restaino JC, Kennedy MC, Vihnanek RE. Int. J. Wildland Fire 2016; 25(1): 10-24.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, International Association of Wildland Fire, Fire Research Institute, Publisher CSIRO Publishing)

DOI

10.1071/WF15092

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A lack of independent, quality-assured data prevents scientists from effectively evaluating predictions and uncertainties in fire models used by land managers. This paper presents a summary of pre-fire and post-fire fuel, fuel moisture and surface cover fraction data that can be used for fire model evaluation and development. The data were collected in the south-eastern United States on 14 forest and 14 non-forest sample units associated with 6 small replicate and 10 large operational prescribed fires conducted during 2008, 2011, and 2012 as part of the Prescribed Fire Combustion and Atmospheric Dynamics Research Experiment (RxCADRE). Fuel loading and fuel consumption averaged 6.8 and 4.1 Mg ha-1 respectively in the forest units and 3.0 and 2.2 Mg ha-1 in the non-forest units. Post-fire white ash cover ranged from 1 to 28%. Data were used to evaluate two fuel consumption models, CONSUME and FOFEM, and to develop regression equations for predicting fuel consumption from ash cover. CONSUME and FOFEM produced similar predictions of total fuel consumption and were comparable with measured values. Simple linear models to predict pre-fire fuel loading and fuel consumption from post-fire white ash cover explained 46 and 59% of variation respectively.

Language: en