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ŠUMARSKI LIST 11-12/2015 str. 65     <-- 65 -->        PDF

FUEL MODELLING AND POTENTIAL FIRE BEHAVIOR IN TURKEY
MODELIRANJE GORIVA I POTENCIJALNO PONAŠANJE POŽARA U TURSKOJ
Omer KUCUK, Ertugrul BILGILI, Paulo M. FERNANDES
Summary
Description of fuel characteristics is an essential input to fire behavior models that can provide decision-support for fire management. Fuel models describe fuel characteristics for fire modeling systems based on Rothermel’s fire spread model. In this study, fire behavior data collected in field experiments in different fuel complexes in Turkey is used in the process of fuel model development. Nine fuel models were built for low and tall maquis, Anatolian black pine (P. nigra J.F. Arnold subsp. nigra var. caramanica (Loudon) Rehder), litter, and slash variable in age and load. BehavePlus simulations of fire rate of spread, flame length and fireline intensity for typical summer weather conditions highlight the quite different fire potential between the studied fuel types. The difficulty in dealing with fuel complexes dominated by live fuels was evident from the simulations. On the contrary, the model correctly predicted the observed temporal decrease of fire behavior in slash. This study shows the crucial importance of experimental fire data to parameterize fuel models.
Key words: Fuel modeling, experimental fires, fire behavior, fire modeling systems, Turkey.
INTRODUCTION
Uvod
Fire has been a major force in shaping the landscapes of the world and consequently it has been the subject of a research effort of enormous proportions. An increasingly important requirement of forest and land management in fire-prone ecosystems is the ability to predict fire behavior.
Advances in fire behavior science have gradually resulted in the development of fuel and fire bihavior prediction model to support the decision-making process of land managers on a large array of fire management problems (Bilgili et al. 2006).
Fire behavior and fire danger are usually described in association with a fuel model or fuel type (Alexander et al. 1991; Hirsch, 1996). Strictly speaking, a fuel model is a set of a measurable fuel bed properties (Anderson, 1982), quantified for a distinctive vegetation community, to be used as an input to the mathematical fire spread model of Rothermel (1972). Fuel models support local fire behavior prediction, but also fire danger rating systems when a general assess­ment of potential fire behavior or fuel hazard is required in regional fire management planning (Anderson, 1982).
Differences in fire behavior, under similar meteorological and topographic conditions, are determined by fuel