This study explores drivers of international resources sent to aid with US fire management, focusing on ground and overhead personnel. Using 2008–2020 data, this study investigates conditions for international sharing and potential barriers. Findings show sharing is more likely with higher preparedness, larger areas burned, and greater impact on people and structures.
Fires are commonly patchy and of varying severity. Effects of fire severity and burn patchiness are rarely incorporated into fuel models. We show that accounting for fire patchiness and fire severity improves predictions of fire behaviour. This is important for operational fire management and fire risk assessments.
A spatial simulation model for predicting wildland surface fire behaviour is described. The model is tested under idealised environmental conditions and validated with real-world case studies in Sardinia, Italy. Results are promising in terms of model performance, suggesting its potential to provide a valuable contribution in operational fire management applications.
This article belongs to the Collection ICFFR.
In the process of firefighters escaping from wildfires, the planned escape route should not only consider the shortest travel time, but also the safety of the route. This article establishes an escape route model that ensures both the rapid evacuation of firefighters and their safety throughout the entire escape process.
Smouldering peat fires can survive underground for months, and may re-emerge and start a flame above ground when the dry and hot season arrives. This work demonstrates that the resurfacing of underground peat fire can ignite a flame on the surface litter layer and increase wildfire hazards. Photograph by Yichao Zhang et al.
Fire frequency is increasing with climate change in south-eastern Australia. We predicted that hollow-bearing trees will decline in forests where frequent fires co-occur with high rates at which trees collapse or are removed (e.g. due to frequent planned burns or timber harvesting) and/or where there are not a sufficient number of suitable mature trees in which new hollows can be excavated by fire (e.g. where tree regeneration is inhibited).
Burn severity is critical to understand fire dynamics. We mapped and modelled burn severity as a function of biophysical variables. Low severity was rare and occurred in small fires during cool and wet summer conditions in areas with sparser fuels or in more productive environments with discontinuous wet fuels.
This work used high frequency satellite derived wildfire properties to improve short-term (0–6 h) forecasts of smoke plumes. Results show that ingesting high frequency data significantly improves wildfire smoke forecasts compared to current operational systems.
This paper presents a cellular automaton to simulate multidimensional spread of smouldering peat with horizontally varying moisture. The model accurately predicted laboratory experiments (below 20% error) on the spread of smouldering under non-uniform moisture conditions and reproduced complex phenomena such as diagonal spread and encirclement of wet peat.
We developed empirical relationships linking fireline intensity and flame length, based on a compilation of data collected in field head fires, conducted worldwide in forest, shrubland and grassland. Two relationships emerged, respectively for forest and shrublands and for grasslands, and were deemed suitable for scientific and operational application.
This research expands on previous work exploring the decision making of US Forest Service wildfire managers, using social science methods to elucidate the factors that help drive their decisions to suppress or manage wildfires. We found a complex network of factors that show increasing ambiguity in the wildfire decision environment.
This paper describes a method to monitor forest fire progress using dual-polarisation Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images combined with multi-scale segmentation and unsupervised classification. We aimed to take full advantage of the many different dimensions of feature parameter changes caused by forest fires, relying on time-series dual-polarised SAR imagery to achieve burned area extraction and forest fire progress monitoring.
Citizen science provides an important opportunity for the wildfire community, enabling data collection at broad spatio-temporal scales. Direct fuel moisture measurement campaigns can maximise these benefits by accounting for natural differences in measurements between individuals. We quantify the magnitude and variability of differences during an intensive fuel moisture measurement campaign.
We tested a lightweight architecture called LEF-YOLO for detecting four extreme wildfires. We found improved detection accuracy through multi-scale fusion and attention mechanism, and constructed four extreme wildfire datasets and compared these with multiple object detection models and lightweight feature extraction networks. This method is beneficial for the development of extreme wildfire field robots.
Soil phosphorus (P) availability in natural ecosystems relies on the returning of P in plant biomass. This study shows how fire conditions and plant species and their parts interact in determining the physical and chemical forms and solubility of P that control its post-fire cycling in the environment.
This study analyses fire regimes in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park and Lupande Game Management Area. It examines the influence of climate and human activities on burned areas. Findings show differences in burned areas and highlight the significance of soil moisture and rainfall in shaping fire regimes in African savannas.
This paper explores the relationships between the major forces influencing Australian weather and climate, and the chance of severe fire seasons. The findings could be valuable in decision making and preparation for upcoming fire seasons to avoid more seasons with devastating outcomes such as the 2019–2020 Black Summer.
This article belongs to the Collection Fire and Climate.
A fire front spreading on a windward slope typically has a V-shape that can induce fire whirls, posing a risk to firefighters. We considered ambient wind, slope angle and line fire characteristics to predict the fire whirl risk.
This paper presents the results of a broad survey of US federal wildland firefighters. Our results highlight needs for reform in hiring practices, offer insight into retention and suggest a need for expanded mental healthcare.
Potential Wildfire Operational Delineations (PODs) were developed as a pre-season planning tool to promote safe and effective fire response. Past research on PODs has identified uses in an incident management context and explored avenues to strengthen its approach. This article explores how PODs are integrating fire and fuels planning.
Models were developed to estimate the probability of initial attack success in grassland-, forest- and shrubland-dominated vegetation types. The models include variables describing weather conditions, travel delay, slope and distance from roads, and they can be used as an early prompt to plan for protracted suppression.
Factors influencing burn severity in tropical montane forest fires are poorly understood. We found that higher burn severity occurred under topographic conditions associated with steeper slopes and drier aspects, which promote greater fuel dryness. Burn severity also increased with elevation, possibly owing to greater vulnerability of tree species to fire.
Rangeland grasshoppers congregate in areas that have been recently burned to take advantage of higher crude protein, and generally avoid consuming grass in nearby unburned areas.
This study assessed the impact of a fire suppression chemical (Phos-Chek) on native and introduced species found in Western Australia. It observed that effects vary among species, with an overall negative impact to germination and emergence.
We compared measurements from three low-cost portable air quality sensors with research-grade instruments for gas and particle emissions in smouldering wildfires. We found that sensors KANE101 and SDS011 can be used in the field after calibration, and improve understanding of using low-cost and portable emission sensors for wildfire measurements.