Fuel Break Effectiveness: Expanding our understanding of changing fire behavior specific to variations in fuel treatments and wind

One of the many challenges facing fire managers is understanding changes in fire behavior associated with fuel discontinuities, planned and placed fuel treatments and transitioning fuel dynamics. Fuel treatments and fuel breaks are widely used and/or proposed throughout many Wildfire Crisis Strategy landscapes, but little quantitative research is understood about the overall effectiveness of these fuel discontinuities. 

This project seeks to improve our understanding of ignition by exploring the physics underlying fire’s response to gaps in vegetation under the influence of wind, fuel conditions, and microtopography. A series of laboratory experiments will be conducted at the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety wind tunnels facility in Richburg, South Carolina to expand on our understand of fuel break effectiveness in a controlled environment. Additionally, a series of field experiments will be conducted at the Konza Tallgrass Prairie outside on Manhattan, Kansas; Department of Defense Dugway Proving Grounds near Dugway, Utah; and Bureau of Land Management landscape burns near Winnemucca, Nevada. These experiments will expand to our limited understanding a fuel treatments and expected changes in fire behavior, providing quantitative data for operational guidelines specific to fuel treatment design and overall fuel break effectiveness.