@article{ref1,
title="The potential and realized spread of wildfires across Canada",
journal="Global change biology",
year="2014",
author="Wang, Xianli and Parisien, Marc-Andre and Flannigan, Mike D. and Parks, Sean A. and Anderson, Kerry R. and Little, John M. and Taylor, Steve W.",
volume="20",
number="8",
pages="2518-2530",
abstract="Given that they can burn for weeks or months, wildfires in temperate and boreal forests may become immense (eg 10(0) - 10(4) km(2) ). However, during the period within which a large fire is &quot;active&quot;, not all days experience weather that is conducive to fire spread; indeed most of the spread occurs on a small proportion (e.g. 1 ~ 15 days) of not necessarily consecutive days during the active period. This study examines and compares the Canada-wide patterns in fire-conducive weather ('potential' spread) and the spread that occurs on the ground ('realized' spread). <br><br>RESULTS show substantial variability in distributions of potential and realized spread days across Canada. Both potential and realized spread are higher in western than in eastern Canada; whereas potential spread generally decreases from south to north, there is no such pattern with realized spread. The realized-to-potential fire spread ratio is considerably higher in northern Canada than in the south, indicating that proportionally more fire-conducive days translate into fire progression. An exploration of environmental correlates to spread show that there may be a few factors compensating for the lower potential spread in northern Canada: a greater proportion of coniferous (i.e., more flammable) vegetation, lesser human impacts (i.e. less fragmented landscapes), sufficient fire ignitions, and intense droughts. Because a linear relationship exists between the frequency distributions of PSD and SD in a fire zone, it is possible to obtain one from the other using a simple conversion factor. Our methodology thus provides a means to estimate realized fire spread from weather-based data in regions where fire databases are poor, which may improve our ability in predicting future fire activities. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1354-1013",
doi="10.1111/gcb.12590",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12590"
}