Journal
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT
Volume 198, Issue 1-3, Pages 261-267Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2004.04.010
Keywords
fuels management; forest fire; silviculture; percolation model; compartmentation
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Fire spreads in a specifically spatial manner, which suggests the applicability of percolation models to the risk reduction problem. It is shown that under fairly general conditions a threshold exists below which a landscape becomes essentially fireproof. Arranging treated acres into a grid, analogous to bulkheads on a ship, drastically reduces the acreage that must be treated to achieve a fireproof condition. Such compartmentation of the landscape yields a much higher leverage (ratio of acres saved to acres treated). Certain landscape features create updrafts that spread fire particularly far. Treating fuels in such areas yields high leverage. Fire shadow effects were replicated by the simulation and showed a possible mechanism for amplifying treatment effectiveness. Either fuel reduction programs or commercial forestry can be used to achieve hazard reduction without excessive costs if spatial aspects of fire spread are taken into account. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available