2014 GSA Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia (19–22 October 2014)

Paper No. 168-10
Presentation Time: 3:30 PM

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF FIRE BEHAVIOR DURING PRESCRIBED FIRES IN NEW JERSEY


SIMEONI, Albert1, MUELLER, Eric1, SKOWRONSKI, Nicholas2, CLARK, Kenneth3, KREMENS, Robert4, GALLAGHER, Michael3, THOMAS, Jan1, EL HOUSSAMI, Mohamad1, FILKOV, Alexander5 and BUTLER, Bret6, (1)BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering, University of Edinburgh, School of Engineering, King's Buildings, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3JL, United Kingdom, (2)USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Morgantown, WV 26505, (3)USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Silas Little Experimental Forest, New Lisbon, NJ 08064, (4)Rochester Institute of Technology, Center for Imaging Science, 54 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY 14623, (5)National Research Tomsk State University, Department of Physical and Computational Mechanics, 36, Lenin av, Tomsk, 634050, Russia, (6)USDA Forest Service, RMRS Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, 5775 US Hwy 10, West Missoula, MT 59808

Prescribed fire is a commonly used practice for managing wildland fire spread and intensity. As part of a larger project intended to aid in assessing fuel treatment effectiveness, two experimental prescribed fires were conducted. Efforts were made to both quantify various aspects of fire behavior and to obtain an accurate measure of pre- and post-fire fuel loadings. An initial investigation of the fire behavior for the two experimental fires was conducted. In particular, the range of observed surface fuel consumption and fireline intensities is discussed, the role of ambient wind conditions is considered, and a qualitative assessment of canopy fuel consumption is presented.

Additional Co-authors: John Hom, USDA Forest Service, Newtown Square, Pennsylvania; William Mell, USDA Forest Service, Seattle, Washington.

Handouts
  • Presentation GSA_Simeoni.pdf (48.0 MB)