How to diagnose fuel properties in WRF-SFIRE
The fuel properties in WRF-Fire are given in file namelist.fire. These serve to create coefficients in the Rothermel's formula. To aid diagnostics it is useful to graph the resulting fire spread rate as a function of wind and slope. The graphs are available in metric units, as well as in English units for direct comparison with the published spread rate graphs for the Scott-Burgan fuel categories.
Prerequisites
Step-by-step instructions
- Run WRF-Fire, you can kill it right after the the first time step. There will be file fuels.m created in the current directory.
- Start Matlab in the directory test/em_fire to set up the search path properly.
- In Matlab, navigate to the directory with the fuels.m file
- Type fuels. This will create variable fuel. Say you want to check fuel 3. Type fuel(3) to see what is there.
- Type plot_fuel(fuel(3)) to create the graph below in metric units, and plot_fuel(fuel(3),'sb') for the same units as in Scott and Burgan (2005). The graph data are created in WRF-Fire and stored in the fuel variable.
- Type edit fire_ros to see the fire spread rate calculation recreated in Matlab.
- Type big(check_ros(fuel)) to make sure the calculation in Matlab is the same as in WRF-Fire, it should return rounding error only (less than 1e-4)
Works with
- WRF-Fire branch fireflux 16 Sep 2010 and hopefully later
- Matlab R2010a
References
- Anderson, H. E., 1982. Aids to determining fuel models for estimating fire behavior. U.S. Forest Service General Technical Report INT-122. Ogden, UT. pdf (The original 13 fuel models)
- Baughman, R. G. and F. A. Albini.,1980. Estimating midflame windspeeds. In Sixth Conference on Fire and Forest Meteorology, Seattle, WA (Society of American Foresters) pdf (Windspeed reduction from 20ft)
- Rothermel, R.C., 1972. A mathematical model for predicting fire spread in wildland fuels. Res. Pap. INT-115. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. 40 pp. pdf (The original for reference)
- Rothermel, R. C., 1983. How to predict the spread and intensity of forest and range fires. U.S. Forest Service General Technical Report INT-143. Ogden, UT. pdf (Updated version)
- Scott, J. H. and Burgan, R. E., 2005. Standard fire behavior fuel models: a comprehensive set for use with Rothermel's surface fire spread model. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-153. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, 72 pp. pdf (More detailed fuel models, with rate of spread curves)