IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecomod/v220y2009i7p898-903.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A derivation of the statistical characteristics of forest fires

Author

Listed:
  • Lin, Jianyi
  • Rinaldi, Sergio

Abstract

The analysis of large data sets concerning fires in various forested areas of the world has pointed out that burned areas can often be described by different power-law distributions for small, medium and large fires and that a scaling law for the time intervals separating successive fires is fulfilled. The attempts of deriving such statistical laws from purely theoretical arguments have not been fully successful so far, most likely because important physical and/or biological factors controlling forest fires were not taken into account. By contrast, the two-layer spatially extended forest model we propose in this paper encapsulates the main characteristics of vegetational growth and fire ignition and propagation, and supports the empirically discovered statistical laws. Since the model is fully deterministic and spatially homogeneous, the emergence of the power and scaling laws does not seem to necessarily require meteorological randomness and geophysical heterogeneity, although these factors certainly amplify the chaoticity of the fires. Moreover, the analysis suggests that the existence of different power-laws for fires of various scale might be due to the two-layer structure of the forest which allows the formation of different kinds of fires, i.e. surface, crown, and mixed fires.

Suggested Citation

  • Lin, Jianyi & Rinaldi, Sergio, 2009. "A derivation of the statistical characteristics of forest fires," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 220(7), pages 898-903.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:220:y:2009:i:7:p:898-903
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2009.01.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380009000350
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2009.01.011?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. K. Schenk & B. Drossel & S. Clar & F. Schwabl, 2000. "Finite-size effects in the self-organized critical forest-fire model," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 15(1), pages 177-185, May.
    2. Albano, Ezequiel V., 1995. "Spreading analysis and finite-size scaling study of the critical behavior of a forest fire model with immune trees," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 216(3), pages 213-226.
    3. Lasaponara, Rosa & Santulli, Adriano & Telesca, Luciano, 2005. "Time-clustering analysis of forest-fire sequences in southern Italy," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 139-149.
    4. Drossel, B. & Schwabl, F., 1992. "Self-organized criticality in a forest-fire model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 191(1), pages 47-50.
    5. Drossel, B. & Schwabl, F., 1993. "Forest-fire model with immune trees," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 199(2), pages 183-197.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kwadwo YEBOAH BOTAH, 2023. "Forest Fires In A Changing Climate: Risk Assessment And Management In Leiria National Forest, Portugal," Eastern European Journal for Regional Studies (EEJRS), Center for Studies in European Integration (CSEI), Academy of Economic Studies of Moldova (ASEM), vol. 9(2), pages 169-191, December.
    2. Nadjla Bentekhici & Sid-Ahmed Bellal & Ahmed Zegrar, 2020. "Contribution of remote sensing and GIS to mapping the fire risk of Mediterranean forest case of the forest massif of Tlemcen (North-West Algeria)," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 104(1), pages 811-831, October.
    3. de Benicio, Rosilda B. & Stošić, Tatijana & de Figueirêdo, P.H. & Stošić, Borko D., 2013. "Multifractal behavior of wild-land and forest fire time series in Brazil," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(24), pages 6367-6374.
    4. Remzi Eker & Tunahan Çınar & İsmail Baysal & Abdurrahim Aydın, 2024. "Remote sensing and GIS-based inventory and analysis of the unprecedented 2021 forest fires in Türkiye’s history," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 120(12), pages 10687-10707, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Telesca, Luciano & Lasaponara, Rosa, 2010. "Analysis of time-scaling properties in forest-fire sequence observed in Italy," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 221(1), pages 90-93.
    2. de Benicio, Rosilda B. & Stošić, Tatijana & de Figueirêdo, P.H. & Stošić, Borko D., 2013. "Multifractal behavior of wild-land and forest fire time series in Brazil," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(24), pages 6367-6374.
    3. Benavent-Corai, J. & Rojo, C. & Suárez-Torres, J. & Velasco-García, L., 2007. "Scaling properties in forest fire sequences: The human role in the order of nature," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 205(3), pages 336-342.
    4. Telesca, Luciano & Amatulli, Giuseppe & Lasaponara, Rosa & Lovallo, Michele & Santulli, Adriano, 2007. "Identifying spatial clustering properties of the 1997–2003 Liguria (Northern Italy) forest-fire sequence," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 1364-1370.
    5. Lara-Sagahón, A. & Govezensky, T. & Méndez-Sánchez, R.A. & José, M.V., 2006. "A lattice-based model of rotavirus epidemics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 359(C), pages 525-537.
    6. Albano, Ezequiel V., 1995. "Spreading analysis and finite-size scaling study of the critical behavior of a forest fire model with immune trees," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 216(3), pages 213-226.
    7. Alexander Shiroky & Andrey Kalashnikov, 2021. "Mathematical Problems of Managing the Risks of Complex Systems under Targeted Attacks with Known Structures," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(19), pages 1-11, October.
    8. Zinck, Richard D. & Johst, Karin & Grimm, Volker, 2010. "Wildfire, landscape diversity and the Drossel–Schwabl model," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 221(1), pages 98-105.
    9. Macpherson, K.P. & MacKinnon, A.L., 1997. "One-dimensional percolation models of transient phenomena," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 243(1), pages 1-13.
    10. Satulovsky, Javier E., 1997. "On the synchronizing mechanism of a class of cellular automata," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 237(1), pages 52-58.
    11. Kondor, Dániel & Mátray, Péter & Csabai, István & Vattay, Gábor, 2013. "Measuring the dimension of partially embedded networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(18), pages 4160-4171.
    12. Bill McKelvey & Benyamin B. Lichtenstein & Pierpaolo Andriani, 2012. "When organisations and ecosystems interact: toward a law of requisite fractality in firms," International Journal of Complexity in Leadership and Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 2(1/2), pages 104-136.
    13. Batac, Rene & Longjas, Anthony & Monterola, Christopher, 2012. "Statistical distributions of avalanche size and waiting times in an inter-sandpile cascade model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(3), pages 616-624.
    14. Peyrard, N. & Dieckmann, U. & Franc, A., 2008. "Long-range correlations improve understanding of the influence of network structure on contact dynamics," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 73(3), pages 383-394.
    15. Marzouk, Cyril, 2016. "Fires on large recursive trees," Stochastic Processes and their Applications, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 265-289.
    16. Yuan, Ying & Zhuang, Xin-tian & Liu, Zhi-ying & Huang, Wei-qiang, 2014. "Analysis of the temporal properties of price shock sequences in crude oil markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 394(C), pages 235-246.
    17. Ruskin, H.J. & Feng, Y., 1997. "Self-organised criticality in some dissipative sandpile models," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 245(3), pages 453-460.
    18. LaViolette, Randall A. & Glass, Kristin & Colbaugh, Richard, 2009. "Deep information from limited observation of robust yet fragile systems," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(17), pages 3283-3287.
    19. Lasaponara, Rosa & Santulli, Adriano & Telesca, Luciano, 2005. "Time-clustering analysis of forest-fire sequences in southern Italy," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 139-149.
    20. Honecker, A. & Peschel, I., 1997. "Length scales and power laws in the two-dimensional forest-fire model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 239(4), pages 509-530.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:220:y:2009:i:7:p:898-903. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ecological-modelling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.