Estimation of Peak Heat Release Rate of a Forest Fuel Bed in Outdoor Laboratory Conditions

Madrigal, Javier; Guijarro, Mercedes; Hernando, Carmen; Díez, Carmen; Marino, Eva

doi:10.1177/0734904110373890

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(33 reference statements)

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“…collected as bulk particles, and reconstructed in the laboratory after particle sorting[45]) and tested immediately after construction. Fast and easy collection, the possibility of fuel standardisation, (e.g., testing samples with standardised mass[18,68,71], height or volume [34,45,52], composition [27,48,71–74]) and particle manipulation [25,28], as well as the ability to construct large litter beds (e.g.,[51]) can be considered as advantages of constructed samples. Sampling of aged particles and the subsequent construction of the fuel bed in the laboratory accounts for particle fragmentation [35] and aging induced chemical changes of the fuels [44].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within each treatment, 5 samples per species were used for testing fire behaviour and 3 for taking subsamples for morphological measurements. Samples assigned to the fresh treatment were prepared using the common approach of a sample being prepared just prior to the testing (e.g.,[18,25,28,51,52]). Fresh treatment samples were prepared by dropping a small amount of leaves at one time into the testing cage and consequently gently shaking the testing cage to ensure uniform distribution of the litter inside of the cage.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do relationships between leaf traits and fire behaviour of leaf litter beds persist in time?

2018

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Wildland fires are a dominant disturbance on Earth. On the local scale, fire activity is also influenced by species-specific fire behaviour of leaf litter beds. Thus, researchers strive to identify plant functional traits governing fire behaviour. The currently accepted relationships between morphological characteristics of the individual particles, fuel bed structure and resulting fire behaviour have been established on freshly constructed leaf litter beds. To investigate to what degree these relationships are altered upon exposure of constructed leaf litter beds to outside weather conditions, a novel testing system was designed. It enables outdoor exposure of the constructed litter beds, their subsequent retrieval and fire behaviour testing without disturbing the sample structure. Two treatments were applied on seven monospecific leaf litters. “Fresh treatment” corresponded to the common practice of testing fire behaviour directly after fuel bed construction. In the “settled treatment” constructed fuel beds were exposed for 30 days to outside weather conditions before being tested. The “settled treatment” was designed to address physical changes in the fuel bed structure which occur due to repeated wetting of the fuel bed. Thus, to minimise the effects of decomposition and fragmentation, winter exposure was chosen. Within the “fresh treatment” previously established relationships between size, curl, bulk density and fire behaviour characteristics could be confirmed. In the “settled treatment” the majority of these relationships lost their significance. The “settled treatment” had significantly lower bulk density (BD), rate of spread, maximum flame height and maximum sand temperature at 1 cm depth; and significantly higher flaming duration and amount of unburned residues compared to the “fresh treatment”. Species with low initial BD were more affected by the treatment than species with high initial BD. The abrupt change in the fire behaviour of some leaf litter beds and the loss of numerous relationships between morphological characteristics of the individual particles and fire behaviour characteristics upon settled treatment indicate that fast occurring changes in the fuel bed structure should be taken into consideration if we are to understand the relationships between functional traits and local fire activity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do relationships between leaf traits and fire behaviour of leaf litter beds persist in time?

2018

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“…Most authors broadly define flammability as the capacity of a material to ignite and sustain a fire, but the components measured to provide an assessment of flammability vary across authors and disciplines (e.g. Anderson 1970;Martin et al 1994;Liodakis et al 2002;Gill and Zylstra 2005;White and Zipperer 2010;Jaureguiberry et al 2011;Madrigal et al 2011;Pausas and Moreira 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A quantitative assessment of shoot flammability for 60 tree and shrub species supports rankings based on expert opinion

Wyse

Perry

O'Connell

et al. 2016

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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Abstract. Fire is an important ecological disturbance in vegetated ecosystems across the globe, and also has considerable impacts on human infrastructure. Vegetation flammability is a key bottom-up control on fire regimes and on the nature of individual fires. Although New Zealand (NZ) historically had low fire frequencies, anthropogenic fires have considerably impacted indigenous vegetation as humans used fire extensively to clear forests. Few studies of vegetation flammability have been undertaken in NZ and only one has compared the flammability of indigenous plants; this was a qualitative assessment derived from expert opinion. We addressed this knowledge gap by measuring the flammability of terminal shoots from a range of trees and shrubs found in NZ. We quantified shoot flammability of 60 indigenous and exotic species, and compared our experimentally derived ranking with expert opinion. The most flammable species was the invasive exotic shrub Gorse (Ulex europaeus), followed by Manna Gum (Eucalyptus viminalis), K% umarahou (Pomaderris kumeraho), Rimu (Dacrydium cupressinum) and Silver Beech (Lophozonia menziesii). Our experimentally derived ranking was strongly correlated with expert opinion, lending support to both methods. Our results are useful to ecologists seeking to understand how fires have and will influence NZ's ecosystems, and for fire managers identifying high-risk landscapes, and low flammability species for 'green firebreaks'.

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“…Whole plants were tested in an outdoor wind tunnel (see Madrigal et al 2011b for details). Flammability parameters were analysed in 1-and 5-year-old shrubs.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of the flammability of gorse (Ulex europaeus L.) managed by prescribed burning

Madrigal

Marino

Guijarro

et al. 2011

Annals of Forest Science

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Estimation of Peak Heat Release Rate of a Forest Fuel Bed in Outdoor Laboratory Conditions

Cited by 11 publications

References 16 publications

Do relationships between leaf traits and fire behaviour of leaf litter beds persist in time?

Do relationships between leaf traits and fire behaviour of leaf litter beds persist in time?

A quantitative assessment of shoot flammability for 60 tree and shrub species supports rankings based on expert opinion

Evaluation of the flammability of gorse (Ulex europaeus L.) managed by prescribed burning

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