IX International Conference on Forest Fire Research and 17th International Wildland Fire Safety Summit: introduction to special issue (Part 3)

Decision support systems and tools

Purnomo et al. (2023) presented a cellular automata model to simulate flaming and smouldering wildfires in peatlands over long duration, which, for the first time, considers daily variations in peat moisture. The model reveals that smouldering burned area varies widely depending on the daily variations in moisture.

Hanes et al. (2023) started from the premise that drought in fire danger rating is often estimated using weather-based models. They explored the potential to supplement those estimates with soil moisture content measurements from electronic soil moisture probes, and estimates from land surface models that include remotely sensed soil moisture within the boreal forests of Canada.

Moreno-Ruiz et al. (2023) described the development and validation of a burned area product at a spatial resolution of 0.05° (~5 km) for the boreal region between 60°N and 72.5°N from 1982 to 2020. This satellite-based dataset provides unique long-term burned area information of interest for fire and carbon dynamics studies.

Risk assessment

Brody-Heine et al. (2023) explored vector wind change with station and gridded data over New Zealand and compared it with the Fire Weather Index. They used vector wind change to create a modified Fire Weather Index that incorporates sudden wind changes into fire danger prediction.

Parente et al. (2023) tested three different erosion prediction tools to identify areas with erosion rates above the 95th percentile in the first year after a fire, and address model recalibration based on fire characteristics.

Lopes et al. (2023) investigated the modelling of sorption processes of 10-h Pinus pinaster branches, based on both laboratory and field data. They state that forest fuel moisture content is an important parameter that determines fire risk; therefore, its accurate prediction has great importance. The resulting model showed an ability to predict moisture content.

Risk reduction

Campbell-Lochrie et al. (2023) investigated how the effects of fuel structure on physical phenomena controlling flame spread are complicated by the porous nature of wildland fuels. They measured heat transfer in pine needle fuel beds (across a range of fuel structural conditions) to characterise these effects and the resulting variations in fire behaviour.

Valencia et al. (2023) carried out controlled gorse burning experiments using specialised drone-mounted instrumentation to measure fire movement and duration. They then compared the results with detailed maps of vegetation height measured before the experiment. Their results provide new insight on the role of the arrangement of vegetation in the development of wildfires.

Wildfire management and safety

Regos et al. (2023) described how the FirESmart project sheds light on the renewed EU agroforestry policies and on how these policies could benefit open habitat dwelling species while providing further fire suppression opportunities. They concluded that the use of fire can enhance ‘climate-smart’ strategies such as ‘rewilding’ or ‘tree-planting’ in mountain areas across Southern Europe.

Viegas et al. (2023) studied two fires that started near Pedrógão Grande, Portugal in June 2017. Due to a thunderstorm in the region these fires spread out of control and merged, producing a very fast spreading fire. A laboratory scale simulation showed good qualitative and quantitative agreement with the full-scale observations.

Jamaladdeen et al. (2023) acknowledged that while wildfires are a growing threat, especially in Mediterranean climate areas during periods of drought, knowledge about the effect of wildfire stresses on plants remains lacking. They studied the effect of combined hydric and thermal stresses on Rosmarinus officinalis and Cistus albidus, which are widely consumed in Mediterranean wildfires.

Sahila et al. (2023) studied the combustion characteristics of dead Mediterranean vegetation in the absence of wind. They observed anomalous relaxation of the fuel’s mass accompanied by anomalous diffusion of gas particles during flaming combustion. They analysed and compared combustion characteristics (burning rate, flame height and temperature, gas velocity) and relaxation properties of these fuels.

Wildland urban interface (WUI)

Link and Maranghides (2023) conducted a post-fire case study of the 2018 Camp Fire and identified 23 entrapment and burnover events that threatened the life safety of evacuating civilians and responding emergency personnel. The high number of events within one fire incident suggests this may be a more frequent issue in the future, specifically in the context of WUI fires.

Singh et al. (2023) investigated fundamental fire behaviour during flame spread across a pine needle bed, focusing on the dynamic nature of fire and how this impacts fire spread using cameras, temperature, and velocity. Intermittent flame spread was observed in the form of leaps caused by point ignitions due to flame contact.

Àgueda et al. (2023) presented a tool for the quantitative assessment of vulnerability of dwellings to wildfire at the wildland–urban interface. Structural vulnerabilities and fire spread through these fuels were tackled through a fuzzy logic approach informed by expert opinion. The tool was tested against real-world data taken from two case studies of WUI fires in Spain.