Sand and fire: applying the sandpile model of self-organised criticality to wildfire mitigation†
Joshua E. Gang A # , Wanqi Jia B # and Ira A. Herniter
C *
A Google LLC, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.
B University High School, Irvine, CA 92612, USA.
C Department of Plant Biology, Rutgers University, 59 Dudley Road, Room 379, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
International Journal of Wildland Fire 31(9) 847-856 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF22017
Submitted: 5 May 2021 Accepted: 20 July 2022 Published: 30 August 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of IAWF. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY)
Abstract
Background: Prescribed burns have been increasingly utilised in forest management in the past few decades. However, their effectiveness in reducing the risk of destructive wildfires has been debated. The sandpile model of self-organised criticality, first proposed to model natural hazards, has been recently applied to wildfire research for describing a negative linear relationship between the logarithm of fire size, in area burned, and the logarithm of fire incidence number of that size.
Aims: We demonstrate the applicability of the sandpile model to an understanding of wildfire incidence and its trend with interested factors, such as prescribed burns.
Methods: We leverage the sandpile model to perform a series of simulations, along with comparisons to historical wildfire data in three American states: Florida, California, and Georgia.
Key results: Both simulated and historical data indicate that increased prescribed burning is associated with lowered incidence of large wildfires.
Conclusions: Our study justifies the application of the sandpile model to wildfire research and establishes a novel method for facilitating the investigation of potential risk factors of wildfires.
Implications: The sandpile model may be utilised for the development of optimal strategies for prescribed burning. An R-script for sandpile model simulation is available for further wildfire investigation.
Keywords: California, fire management, Florida, Georgia, prescribed burn, sandpile model, self-organised criticality, United States of America, wildfire.
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