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Fuel Load and Fire Behaviour in the Southern Ontario Tallgrass Prairie

Prescribed burning is an important management tool for the restoration and maintenance of tallgrass prairies. To improve fire behaviour prediction in tallgrass prairies, I assessed three different aspects of fire behaviour - heat of combustion, fuel load and rate of spread. Heat of combustion was found to vary amongst certain tallgrass species but the relatively small differences in means is unlikely to contribute significantly to fire behaviour. Average fuel loads in Ontario tallgrass prairie sites were found to be higher than current default value used in fire behaviour prediction. Three rapid fuel load assessment techniques were tested. Finally, the predictions of three fire behaviour prediction systems - the FBP System, BehavePlus and an Australian grassfire spread model, were compared with actual fire behaviour observations. The FBP System was found to perform poorly while both BehavePlus and the Australian model exhibited relatively strong relationships between observed and predicted rates of spread.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/18791
Date12 February 2010
CreatorsKidnie, Susan M.
ContributorsWotton, Brian Michael, Martell, David Lee
Source SetsUniversity of Toronto
Languageen_ca
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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