North Central Research Station

Current Research

Physically Based Wildland Fire Modeling and its Integration in Large-Eddy Atmospheric Models

Dr. Mary A. Jenkins (mjenkins@met.utah.edu), Department of Meteorology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; Dr. Steven K Krueger, Department of Meteorology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; Dr. William Mell, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; Dr. Joseph J. Charney (jcharney@fs.fed.us), USDA Forest Service, East Lansing, MI.

Purpose:   Develop and evaluate a first generation, computationally efficient, physically-based approach to wildland fire and fuel modeling that will be coupled to an atmospheric model.

Objectives:

1. Implement a simple ground and canopy solid fuel model in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) large eddy simulation wildland urban interface fire code using thermal elements for chemical heat release and flux tracing for thermal radiation.
2. Evaluate the fire model developed in objective 1 by comparing to the predictions of other fire models and appropriate experimental data.
3. Improve the coupling between the solid fuel model and the gas phase fire model so that the burning of the solid fuel is more realistically driven by heat transfer from the fire.
4. Re-evaluate the fire model by again comparing the predictions of other fire models and experimental data used in objective 2, as well as comparing the model against data that might be more appropriate, considering the addition of new physical processes in objective 3.
5. Develop a plan that details the methodology and guidelines for establishing a coupled fire-atmosphere modeling system using the fire model.

Relationships between Fire Behavior and Atmospheric Stability and Humidity

Dr. Mary A. Jenkins ( mjenkins@met.utah.edu ), Department of Meteorology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT

Purpose:   Understand the impacts of atmospheric stability and moisture on fire behavior using a coupled fire-atmosphere computer model.

Objectives:  

1. Use a coupled wildfire-atmosphere numerical prediction model to examine the influence of 16 potential atmospheric profiles on fire growth or behavior. these profiles will all fall within a range of parameters that would yield Haines Index values of 6 for low elevations.

2. Identify threshold values of stability or moisture that delineate marked changes in the fire behavior, if any such thresholds exist in the parameter range explored.

3. Examine the atmospheric processes that lead to the thresholds noted in (2).