Forest fuel bed ignitability under marginal fire weather conditions in Eucalyptus forests

Abstract

Fires burning under marginal fire-weather conditions tend to be patchy in terms of their spatial coverage. This patchiness is partially driven by variability in the ignitability of the fuel bed. An understanding of fuel-bed ignitability through space and time would help fire managers to more effectively carry out prescribed burns to achieve desired levels of burn coverage in Eucalyptus forests. We sought to identify the key fuel-bed attributes influencing ignitability under marginal weather conditions. We recorded ignition successes and failures at 45 points within 5 operational prescribed burns and used the data to build logistic regression models to predict the probability of ignition as a..