Los Alamos National Laboratory
| LANL has been developing a physics-based wildfire model, FIRETEC, for the purpose of assisting decision makers concerned with wildfires and controlled burns. FIRETEC models the driving processes in a wildfire my solving a coupled set of partial differential equations that describe the conservation of mass, momentum, energy, species, and turbulence. The philosophy behind the development of FIRETEC is that a physics-based model of this type will be applicable to a variety of complex wildfire situations that the empirically-based wildfire models can not represent. In addition, FIRETEC is envisioned to be able to assist in investigations of thresholds in wildfire behavior and help determine ideal fuel thinning strategies in the future. Recent work on FIRETEC incorporation of USFS data pertaining to discrete trees. This data is being used to create stands of trees for fire simulations. This is an important step because it will allow us to examine specific thinning strategies and the thresholds that dictate a fires ability to become a crown fire. We have also been using FIRETEC to study the influence of various wind conditions, such as wind gusts, on fire behavior. |