The 1986 Annaburroo experimental grassland fires: data

James S. Gould; Miguel G. Cruz; Andrew L. Sullivan

doi:10.1071/WF23100

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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The 1986 Annaburroo experimental grassland fires: data

James S. Gould ^A , Miguel G. Cruz

^A and Andrew L. Sullivan

^A ^*

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A CSIRO, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: Andrew.Sullivan@csiro.au

International Journal of Wildland Fire 33, WF23100 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF23100

Submitted: 21 June 2023 Accepted: 25 April 2024 Published: 13 May 2024

© 2024 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-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Background

In 1986, CSIRO conducted a large program of experimental fires in grassland at Annaburroo Station, Northern Territory, Australia, with the objective of quantifying the effect of fuel condition (load and height) on fire behaviour.

Aims

This paper provides the data collected during this program, representing a unique set of observations and measurements of large, free-burning experimental fires conducted in a multi-factor experimental design.

Methods

Data are collated by experimental burn plot, providing detailed measurements of weather (wind speed, air temperature, relative humidity), fuel state (load, height, moisture content, curing) and fire behaviour (rate of spread, flame depth, flame height, head fire width), as well as processed information (e.g. steady-state rate of spread).

Data availability

The data are made available for free download on the CSIRO Data Access Portal (https://data.csiro.au/collection/csiro:58746) and include detailed metadata descriptions of the data and their structure, also provided in this article.

Conclusions

We have made the data available for fire behaviour researchers around the world to use in their research under the Creative Commons Attributions licence. It is hoped they will analyse these data and extract new and innovative insights to help improve our understanding of wildland fires burning in grass fuels.

Keywords: Experimental fires, fire behaviour, fuel state, grassland fire.

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