Sensitivity Analysis on Ecological Factors Affecting Forest Fire Spreading: Simulation Study

Abstract

Forest fires are expected to increase in severity and frequency under global climate change and thus better understanding of fire dynamics is critical for mitigation and adaptation. Researchers with different background, such as ecologists, physicists, and mathematical biologists, have developed various simulation models to reproduce forest fire spread dynamics. However, these models have limitations in the fire spreading because of the complicated factors such as fuel types, wind, and moisture. In this study, we suggested a simple model considering the wind effect and two different fuel types. The two fuels correspond to susceptible tree and resistant tree with different probabilities of transferring fire. The trees were randomly distributed in simulation space with a density ranging from 0.0 (low) to 1.0 (high). The susceptible tree had higher value of the probability than the resistant tree. Based on the number of burnt trees, we then carried out the sensitivity analysis to quantify how the forest fire patterns are affected by wind and tree density. The statistical analysis showed that the total tree density had greatest effect on the forest fire spreading and wind had the next greatest effect. The density of the susceptible tree was relatively lower factor affecting the forest fire. We believe that our model can be a useful tool to explore forest fire spreading patterns.