| Popis: |
The aim of the present study is to provide a simple yet complete addition to operational fire spread models for representing the random behavior of fire-spotting in various climate classes through simple inputs related to the wildfires. Results from different test cases highlight the sensitivity of the proposed simple physical parametrization in simulating different scenarios of the generation of secondary fires by fire-spotting under different climatic conditions. Since climate change may cause extreme conditions that contribute to the high fire intensity and larger wildfires, the proposed here parametrization allows us to model the fire-spotting process in various climatic zones and to adjust the existing operational model to the climatic changes. Fire-spotting involves aspects among scales: from the combustion chemistry in microscale, to fire-atmosphere interaction in macroscale. At the meso-scale level, fire-spotting is affected by the mean wind and fireline intensity, which is found to be in a strong interaction with the surrounding factors, such as fuel and local orography. At the macroscopic level, the atmospheric stability conditions impact the fire-spotting pattern. Both, meso- and macro-scale factors are taken into consideration in the proposed probabilistic model devised to provide a physical meaning to the spread of fire by virtue of firebrands, which allows the integration of the diversity of all these parameters into a few differentiable regions. For this purpose, the classification is based on the Köppen-Geiger climate classification, as it is done in the study of complex natural systems in a broad range of topics in hydrology, agriculture, biology, and many others. Previous studies show as well that fire-spotting is a vegetation-dependent phenomena, since not all types of vegetation can generate sufficient combustion energy or produce the firebrands. In order to represent the vegetation component of the fire-spotting generation, the biome world map is incorporated, resulting in the integrated climate-biome classification for the fire-spotting generated fires. |
