Computer model assesses wildfires

In 1996, a blaze caused by an unattended campfire near Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico reminded scientists Manvendra Dubey and Rod Linn of man's vunerability to fire.

December 29, 1999
Web posted at: 2:33 p.m. EST (1933 GMT)

By Environmental News Network staff

A computer model now being developed soon will soon allow scientists to simulate catastrophic wildfires and assess the short- and long-term effects of the volatile chemicals they release into the air.

The model under development by Manvendra Dubey and Rod Linn at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico will be able to simulate fires at extremely high resolution, providing scientists with a crucial tool to predict fire behavior.

"We can look at very small scales," said Dubey. "We are able to view (fire) at a meter of resolution, so we can resolve things like fuel structure and canopy."

The wildfire model was originally developed to study terrain features, atmospheric conditions and heat, which creates its own wind, in predicting wildfire behavior.

The researchers are now building into that model the ability to track the volatile "organics" released into the atmosphere from fires. This will allow them to compute gas and smoke emissions from wildfire.

The new data has implications for understanding how wildfires affect air pollution, global climate changes and even firefighters with vulnerable respiratory systems.

"Our model tries to represent the combined effects of small-scale details into large-scale effects," Linn said in a statement. "With this model, we can ask local, regional and global questions and share the capability with the larger global change community."

Currently, it takes a computer longer to run a wildfire simulation than it takes an actual fire to spread. Therefore, the researchers use the model to simulate historical fires such as the 1994 fire in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, in which 14 firefighters were killed, to study fire behavior. From this data they are able to assess safety and make recommendations.

As technology progresses, the researchers hope to be able to go to an actual fire and simulate its future behavior. A computer with 10 times the power of today's models is required for such a simulation.

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