Retrieval of Fuel Moisture Content from Himawari-8 Product: Towards Real-Time Wildfire Risk Assessment

Author(s):  
Xingwen Quan ◽  
Binbin He ◽  
Marta Yebra ◽  
Xiangzhuo Liu ◽  
Xiaofang Liu ◽  
...  
2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 606 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Chuvieco ◽  
I. Aguado ◽  
S. Jurdao ◽  
M. L. Pettinari ◽  
M. Yebra ◽  
...  

Fire risk assessment should take into account the most relevant components associated to fire occurrence. To estimate when and where the fire will produce undesired effects, we need to model both (a) fire ignition and propagation potential and (b) fire vulnerability. Following these ideas, a comprehensive fire risk assessment system is proposed in this paper, which makes extensive use of geographic information technologies to offer a spatially explicit evaluation of fire risk conditions. The paper first describes the conceptual model, then the methods to generate the different input variables, the approaches to merge those variables into synthetic risk indices and finally the validation of the outputs. The model has been applied at a national level for the whole Spanish Iberian territory at 1-km2 spatial resolution. Fire danger included human factors, lightning probability, fuel moisture content of both dead and live fuels and propagation potential. Fire vulnerability was assessed by analysing values-at-risk and landscape resilience. Each input variable included a particular accuracy assessment, whereas the synthetic indices were validated using the most recent fire statistics available. Significant relations (P < 0.001) with fire occurrence were found for the main synthetic danger indices, particularly for those associated to fuel moisture content conditions.


Author(s):  
Chunquan Fan ◽  
Binbin He ◽  
Peng Kong ◽  
Hao Xu ◽  
Qiang Zhang ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Kellen Nelson ◽  
Daniel Tinker

Understanding how live and dead forest fuel moisture content (FMC) varies with seasonal weather and stand structure will improve researchers’ and forest managers’ ability to predict the cumulative effects of weather on fuel drying during the fire season and help identify acute conditions that foster wildfire ignition and high rates of fire spread. No studies have investigated the efficacy of predicting FMC using mechanistic water budget models at daily time scales through the fire season nor have they investigated how FMC may vary across space. This study addresses these gaps by (1) validating a novel mechanistic live FMC model and (2) applying this model with an existing dead FMC model at three forest sites using five climate change scenarios to characterize how FMC changes through time and across space. Sites include post-fire 24-year old forest, mature forest with high canopy cover, and mature forest affected by the mountain pine beetle with moderate canopy cover. Climate scenarios include central tendency, warm/dry, warm/wet, hot/dry, and hot/wet.


2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ambarish Dahale ◽  
Selina Ferguson ◽  
Babak Shotorban ◽  
Shankar Mahalingam

Formulation of a physics-based model, capable of predicting fire spread through a single elevated crown-like shrub, is described in detail. Predictions from the model, obtained by numerical solutions to governing equations of fluid dynamics, combustion, heat transfer and thermal degradation of solid fuel, are found to be in fairly good agreement with experimental results. In this study we utilise the physics-based model to explore the importance of two parameters – the spatial variation of solid fuel bulk density and the solid fuel moisture content – on the burning of an isolated shrub in quiescent atmosphere. The results suggest that vertical fire spread rate within an isolated shrub and the time to initiate ignition within the crown are two global parameters significantly affected when the spatial variation of the bulk density or the variation of fuel moisture content is taken into account. The amount of fuel burnt is another parameter affected by varying fuel moisture content, especially in the cases of fire propagating through solid fuel with moisture content exceeding 40%. The specific mechanisms responsible for the reduction in propagation speed in the presence of higher bulk densities and moisture content are identified.


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