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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 16(4)

Estimation of dead fuel moisture content from meteorological data in Mediterranean areas. Applications in fire danger assessment

I. Aguado A C , E. Chuvieco A , R. Borén B and H. Nieto A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Department of Geography, University of Alcalá Colegios, 2, E-28801 Alcalá de Henares, Spain.

B Meteológica S. A., C/Almansa, 110, E-28027 Madrid, Spain.

C Corresponding author. Email: inmaculada.aguado@uah.es

International Journal of Wildland Fire 16(4) 390-397 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF06136
Submitted: 25 October 2006  Accepted: 14 June 2007   Published: 20 August 2007

Abstract

The estimation of moisture content of dead fuels is a critical variable in fire danger assessment since it is strongly related to fire ignition and fire spread potential. This study evaluates the accuracy of two well-known meteorological moisture codes, the Canadian Fine Fuels Moisture Content and the US 10-h, to estimate fuel moisture content of dead fuels in Mediterranean areas. Cured grasses and litter have been used for this study. The study was conducted in two phases. The former aimed to select the most efficient code, and the latter to produce a spatial representation of that index for operational assessment of fire danger conditions. The first phase required calibration and validation of an estimation model based on regression analysis. Field samples were collected in the Cabañeros National Park (Central Spain) for a six-year period (1998–2003). The estimations were more accurate for litter (r2 between 0.52) than for cured grasslands (r2 0.11). In addition, grasslands showed higher variability in the trends among the study years. The two moisture codes evaluated in this paper offered similar trends, therefore, the 10-h code was selected since it is simpler to compute. The second phase was based on interpolating the required meteorological variables (temperature and relative humidity) to compute the 10-h moisture code. The interpolation was based on European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) predictions. Finally, a simple method to combine the estimations of dead fuel moisture content with other variables associated to fire danger is presented in this paper. This method estimates the probability of ignition based on the moisture of extinction of each fuel type.

Additional keywords: dead fuel moisture content, fire danger assessment, meteorological data.


Acknowledgements

This paper is derived from the Firemap project CGL2004-06049-C04-01/CLI, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education. Authorities of the Cabañeros National Park greatly facilitated the field work. Fuel type maps of the Madrid region were kindly provided by the Madrid Regional Environmental Office.


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