Conifer Pyrometrics

Updated: August 2022

Here are files and documents associated with the Canadian Conifer Pyrometrics modelling system, a fire behaviour prediction scheme currently in development. The CCP is anticipated to be folded in to the ‘Next Generation’ Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System at some point in the near future. At present, it is intended to stand alone, and can be considered alongside the existing FBP System and CFIS models, to be used by advanced FBANs and fire behaviour professionals who find the existing systems limiting.

Here are the main documents describing the system.

1. Conference paper describing CCP scheme:

Perrakis, D. D. B., M. G. Cruz, M. E. Alexander, S. W. Taylor, and J. L. Beverly. 2020. Linking Dynamic Empirical Fire Spread Models: Introducing Canadian Conifer Pyrometrics. Proceedings from the 6th Fuels and Fire Behaviour Conference, 29 April-03 May 2019, Marseille, France.

2. Workshop presentation (somewhat dated, but still contains some good background info):

Predicting fire behaviour in modified conifer fuels with the Conifer Pyrometrics system. Wildland Fire Canada 2019, 18 November 2019, Ottawa.

3. FuelGraph-CCP v.m12_2022 (new November 2022):

Excel graph tool for predicting, displaying, and comparing ROS using the CCP and FBP System fuel types and structural inputs:

FuelGraph-CCP_v1.0 2022

Note: the latest version of the CFI model (see above) has a slightly different model form:

 

CFI ~ ws + FSG^1.5 + ln(SFC) + ws:mc   (FMC was non-sig.)

The stats are as follows (updated Aug 2022):

 

Call:
glm(formula = CFI ~ ws + I(FSG^1.5) + I(log(SFC2)) + ws:MC.SA, 
    family = binomial(link = "logit"), data = fd2)

Deviance Residuals: 
     Min        1Q    Median        3Q       Max  
-2.19586  -0.03693   0.00077   0.10500   2.58065  

Coefficients:
            Estimate  Std. Error z value Pr(>|z|)   
(Intercept)  -3.97813  1.56901   -2.535  0.011230 * 
ws            1.49185  0.40400    3.693  0.000222 ***
I(FSG^1.5)   -0.59139  0.16396   -3.607  0.000310 ***
I(log(SFC2))  4.46936  1.36704    3.269  0.001078 ** 
ws:MC.SA     -0.07133  0.02106   -3.388  0.000705 ***
---
Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1

(Dispersion parameter for binomial family taken to be 1)

    Null deviance: 148.384  on 107  degrees of freedom
Residual deviance:  38.435  on 103  degrees of freedom
AIC: 48.435

Number of Fisher Scoring iterations: 8

The latest version of FuelGraph has, in addition to an updated probability of CFI model, some tools for incorporating ladder fuel contributions into crown fire prediction.

If you haven’t looked at it in a year or more, you will note a much cleaner user interface than in older versions, as well as some additional tools and capabilities, such as a precise probability of CFI calculator, stand-adjusted mc estimator, and options for using Cruz and Alexander’s ‘10% rule’ (actually 8.4% for conifer forests) when active crown fire is predicted.