Soil Moisture Affects Growing-Season Wildfire Size in the Southern Great Plains

Autor: Dirac Twidwell, Tyson Ochsner, David M. Engle, Erik S. Krueger, J. D. Carlson, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf
Rok vydání: 2015
Předmět:
Zdroj: Soil Science Society of America Journal. 79:1567-1576
ISSN: 0361-5995
Popis: The increasing availability of soil moisture data presents an opportunity for its use in wildfire danger assessments, but research regarding the influence of soil moisture on wildfires is scarce. Our objective was to identify relationships between soil moisture and wildfire size for Oklahoma wildfires during the growing (May-October) and dormant seasons (November-April). We hypothesized that soil moisture influences wildfire size when vegetation is growing but is less important when most vegetation is dead or dormant. Soil moisture, as fraction of available water capacity (FAW), and commonly measured weather variables were determined for 38,419 wildfires from 2000–2012. Wildfires were grouped by size class (
Databáze: OpenAIRE