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© 2024. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

The ambient atmospheric environment affects the growth and spread of wildland fires, whereas heat and moisture released from the fires and the reduction of the surface drag in the burned areas can significantly alter local atmospheric conditions. Observational studies on fire–atmosphere interactions have used instrumented towers to collect data during prescribed fires, but a few towers in an operational-scale burn plot (usually > 103 m2) have made it extremely challenging to capture the myriad of factors controlling fire–atmosphere interactions, many of which exhibit strong spatial variability. Here, we present analyses of atmospheric turbulence data collected using a 4 × 4 array of fast-response sonic anemometers during a fire experiment on a 10 m × 10 m burn plot. In addition to confirming some of the previous findings on atmospheric turbulence associated with low-intensity surface fires, our results revealed substantial heterogeneity in turbulent intensity and heat and momentum fluxes just above the combustion zone. Despite the small plot (100 m2), fire-induced atmospheric turbulence exhibited strong dependence on the downwind distance from the initial line fire and the relative position specific to the fire front as the surface fire spread through the burn plot. This result highlights the necessity for coupled atmosphere–fire behavior models to have 1–2 m grid spacing to resolve heterogeneities in fire–atmosphere interactions that operate on spatiotemporal scales relevant to atmospheric turbulence. The findings here have important implications for modeling smoke dispersion, as atmospheric dispersion characteristics in the vicinity of a wildland fire are directly affected by fire-induced turbulence.

Details

Title
Atmospheric turbulence observed during a fuel-bed-scale low-intensity surface fire
Author
Seitz, Joseph 1 ; Zhong, Shiyuan 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Charney, Joseph J 2 ; Heilman, Warren E 2 ; Clark, Kenneth L 3 ; Bian, Xindi 2 ; Skowronski, Nicholas S 4 ; Gallagher, Michael R 3 ; Patterson, Matthew 4 ; Cole, Jason 5 ; Kiefer, Michael T 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Hadden, Rory 6 ; Mueller, Eric 7 

 Department of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences, Michigan State University, 673 Auditorium Rd. East Lansing, MI 48824, USA 
 USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, 2601 Coolidge Rd., Suite 203, East Lansing, MI 48910, USA 
 USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Silas Little Experimental Forest, 501 Four Mile Road, New Lisbon, NJ 08064, USA 
 USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, 180 Canfield Street, Morgantown, WV 26505, USA 
 USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, 5 Moon Library, 1 Forestry Dr., Syracuse, NY 13210, USA 
 Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3FB, UK 
 National Institutes of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Dr., Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA 
Pages
1119-1142
Publication year
2024
Publication date
2024
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
ISSN
16807316
e-ISSN
16807324
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2918422422
Copyright
© 2024. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.