The Fire Behaviour Program

The University of Toronto and the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) have recently begun a program in physical fire science based at the Faculty of Forestry at the University. This program will focus on research related to forest fire behaviour and the development of enhancements to the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS). This will involve both field research and model development in areas such as fuel moisture, forest fire occurrence and fire behaviour.

The program will continue a long standing collaborative research relationship between the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Toronto, the Canadian Forest Service, and the fire management agencies in Canada. As part of the research program, emphasis will be placed on the transfer of research products into operational use in Canadian forest fire management agencies.

To lead the development of this new program Mike Wotton from the CFS Sault Ste. Marie lab (Great Lakes Forestry Centre) has joined the faculty at the University of Toronto as an adjunct professor. This will provide a strong linkage between ongoing CFS CFFDRS research and this new program. The fire behaviour program will augment the Faculty of Forestry's existing fire and forest management systems research program. A new course focusing on forest fire behaviour has been developed: (FOR 419 - offered January 2008).

Potential areas of research in this program include:

• development of weather-based fuel moisture models for a variety of fuel types
• development of surface fire spread models for major Canadian fuel types
• development of forest fire occurrence models for various forested regions of Canada
• study of the relationships between ambient weather and in stand micro-climate
• investigation and modelling of the influence of forest structure on fire behaviour
• study of fire behaviour potential in modified fuels (e.g., fuels modifed through thinning activity)

Research will focus on understanding important physical processes that govern fire ignition and spread coupled with statistical modelling techniques. Existing datasets of forest fire behaviour, fuel moisture, fire occurrence, fire weather and forest fuels will be used and new data will be collected through field experimentation in collaboration with provincial fire management agencies and other research partners.

Undergraduates at the University of Toronto interested in carrying out undergraduate thesis projects in this area as part of degree requirements are encouraged to contact us to discuss opportunities within the firelab. The close contact between the fire program at the University of Toronto and the Canadian forest fire management agencies means that often problems relevant to current forest fire management issues (along with real datasets) can be identified.

This new program will place a strong emphasis on partnerships with the fire management agencies and other fire researchers. To this end, a fire management research advisory committee, made up of representatives from provincial fire management agencies and other interested research organizations, is being created. Several research projects with these partners have been initiated already.

Those interested in more information about this new program or the fire management systems program at the University of Toronto should contact:

Mike Wotton: mwotton at nrcan.gc.ca OR mike.wotton at utoronto.ca
David Martell: martell at smokey.forestry.utoronto.ca