The Mathematical Modeling of Forest Fires
Abstract
With worsening severity of forest fires in America, it has become a
necessity to understand the behavior of these phenomena. Not
only will this understanding assist land managers with preventing
the start and spread of fires, but they will also be better able to
protect the people living in areas experiencing forest fires. There
are many ways to model these fires, but one of the simplest is
through weather variables such as temperature, wind, and
humidity. Through the creation of a differential equation using
these parameters, one is able to determine many behavioral
patterns of wildfires. By implementing this equation in a C++
computer program, it was found that fires will burn more of a forest
if the wind is blowing in multiple directions, increasing the
probability of fire spread. Additionally, it was found that fires
which originate closer to the center of a forest will, in the end, burn
more trees than those originating near the outer edge. Many
other behaviors could be determined with the addition of fire-specific
weather parameters as well as fire-fighting measures to
the model. This type of information is vital for the prevention and
extinguishing of forest fires.
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