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Multi-scale analyses of wildland fire combustion processes: Small-scale field experiments – temperature profile

dataset
posted on 2024-09-12, 20:14 authored by Kenneth L. Clark, Michael R. Gallagher, Eric V. Mueller, Rory M. Hadden, Carlos Walker-Ravena, Zakary J. Campbell-Lochrie, Jason A. Cole, Matthew M. Patterson, Alexis I. Everland, Nicholas S. Skowronski
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) funded project: "Multi-scale Analyses of Wildland Fire Combustion Processes in Open-canopied Forests using Coupled and Iteratively Informed Laboratory-, Field-, and Model-based Approaches (RC-2641)" small-scale field experiments were designed to investigate how contrasting fuel conditions (e.g., fuel load, particle type, bulk density), fire spread type (e.g., heading vs. backing), and ambient conditions (e.g., seasonality, moisture, flow, temperature) influenced physical processes associated with combustion (e.g., heat transfer, flame propagation, flow) and the scale-dependent coupling of these processes. Additionally, these experiments provide 1) a linkage between small-scale laboratory combustion experiments and large-scale operational prescribed fires, and 2) archived datasets for further model development and evaluation. Our experimental design incorporates complementary approaches, methods, and instrumentation employed at these other scales, to quantify critical properties of the experimental fires’ physics domains (e.g., fuels and ambient conditions) and processes associated with combustion (e.g., heat transfer, flame propagation, flow). The small-scale field experiments include a series of highly instrumented, intermediate-scale experiments conducted on 100 square meter plots at the Silas Little Experimental Forest, New Lisbon, New Jersey. This dataset contains data collected from thermocouples during thirty-four burns in 2018 and 2019. The thermocouples were deployed as 8 to 14 vertical arrays on trusses B and C, with each array consisting of seven K-type thermocouples (KMTXL-IOM25G-150, Omega Engineering Inc., Norwalk, CT) mounted in a vertical profile at 0, 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 and 100 centimeter (cm) heights above fuel beds. For experiments 1-6 conducted in March 2018, four thermocouple arrays mounted on the two center trusses were used, and these were mounted adjacent to each sonic anemometer, for a total of 8 arrays. For experiments 7-36 conducted in May and September 2018 and May 2019, three additional thermocouple arrays were added to each truss, which halved the distance between arrays to 1.5 meters (m), for a total of 14 arrays. Thermocouples were logged at 10 hertz (Hz) using CR3000 dataloggers, and data were used to estimate arrival times, persistence, and height and tilt of flame fronts.
Many DoD facilities utilize low intensity prescribed fire to manage hazardous fuels, restore ecological function and historic fire regimes, and encourage the recovery of threatened and endangered species in the forests they manage. Current predictive models used to simulate fire behavior during low-intensity prescribed fires (and wildfires) are empirically based, simplistic, and fail to adequately predict fire outcomes because they do not account for variability in fuel characteristics and interactions with important meteorological variables. This study used a suite of measurements at the fuel particle, fuel bed, field plot, and stand scales to quantify how variability in fuel characteristics and key meteorological factors interact to drive fire behavior during low intensity prescribed burns. These experiments were designed to inform the development and evaluation of physics-based models that explicitly account for combustion, turbulent transfer, and energy exchange by coupling and scaling individual component processes. These datasets provide measurements to improve the understanding of, and ability to accurately predict, fire behavior under a wide range of management scenarios.
A summary of the SERDP Project RC-2641 can be found at the RC-2641 Project Overview (serdp-estcp.org): https://www.serdp-estcp.org/Program-Areas/Resource-Conservation-and-Resiliency/Air-Quality/Fire-Emissions/RC-2641. Please reference the plot layout and documentation data publication (Gallagher et al. 2022) as these data provide the sensor locations of each burn, a detailed description of data collected and a burn summary.

Funding

USDA-FS

History

Data contact name

Nicholas Skowronski

Publisher

Forest Service Research Data Archive

Use limitations

These data were collected using funding from the U.S. Government and can be used without additional permissions or fees. If you use these data in a publication, presentation, or other research product please use the citation below when citing the data product: Clark, Kenneth L.; Gallagher, Michael R.; Mueller, Eric V.; Hadden, Rory M.; Walker-Ravena, Carlos; Campbell-Lochrie, Zakary J.; Cole, Jason A.; Patterson, Matthew M.; Everland, Alexis I.; Skowronski, Nicholas S. 2022. Multi-scale analyses of wildland fire combustion processes: Small-scale field experiments – temperature profile. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2022-0083

Temporal Extent Start Date

2018-03-01

Temporal Extent End Date

2019-05-31

Theme

  • Not specified

Geographic Coverage

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Geographic location - description

Field experiments were conducted at the United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Silas Little Experimental Forest, located in New Lisbon, New Jersey at a...

ISO Topic Category

  • climatologyMeteorologyAtmosphere
  • environment
  • biota

National Agricultural Library Thesaurus terms

Forestry, Wildland Management

OMB Bureau Code

  • 005:96 - Forest Service

OMB Program Code

  • 005:059 - Management Activities

Pending citation

  • No

Public Access Level

  • Public

Identifier

RDS-2022-0083