HexFire: A Flexible and Accessible Wildfire Simulator

Nathan H. Schumaker (), Sydney M. Watkins and Julie A. Heinrichs
Additional contact information
Nathan H. Schumaker: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment, Corvallis, OR 97333, USA
Sydney M. Watkins: Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, % U.S. EPA Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment, Corvallis, OR 97333, USA
Julie A. Heinrichs: Computational Ecology Group Inc., Canmore, AB T1W 1P2, Canada

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 8, 1-16

Abstract: As fire frequency and severity grow throughout the world, scientists working across a range of disciplines will increasingly need to incorporate wildfire models into their research. However, fire simulators tend to be highly complex, time-consuming to learn, and difficult to parameterize. As a result, embracing these models can prove impractical for scientists and practitioners who are not fire specialists. Here we introduce a parsimonious wildfire simulator named HexFire that has been designed for rapid uptake by investigators who do not specialize in the mechanics of fire spread. HexFire should be useful to such nonspecialists for representing the spread of fire, interactions with fuel breaks, and for integrating wildfire into other types of ecological models. We provide a detailed description of the HexFire simulator’s design and mechanisms. Our heuristic fire spread examples highlight the flexibility inherent in the model system, demonstrate that HexFire can generate a wide range of emergent fire behaviors, and illustrate how HexFire might be coupled with other environmental models. We also describe ways that HexFire itself might be altered or augmented. HexFire can be used as a proxy for more detailed fire simulators and to assess the implications of wildfire for local ecological systems. HexFire can also simulate fire interactions with fuel breaks and active fire suppression.

Keywords: fire model; fire simulation; fire management; fire impacts; HexSim; HexFire (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/8/1288/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/8/1288/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:8:p:1288-:d:885478

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().