Fire Behavior

Fire behavior describes how a fire burns- where it burns, how fast it travels, how much heat it releases, and how much fuel it consumes. It is important to understand what controls fire behavior and how to predict it. This knowledge will help predict fire effects, conduct prescribed burns, predict wildfire risk, and control wildfires. The following sections provide a basic understanding of what controls fire behavior, how to describe fire behavior, and how to predict fire behavior.

• Combustion and Heat Transfer explains how fire produces heat through the physical-chemical process of combustion and how this heat is transferred through pathways such as convection, radiation, and conduction.
• Fire Spread defines the four primary modes of fire spread: ground fires, surface fires, crown fires, and spotting.
• Fire Growth explains how a fires shape and rate of spread changes in relation to fuel, weather, and topography.
• Extreme Fire Behavior explains causes and characteristics of extreme fire behavior and describes fire whirls, plume-dominated fires, and vortex phenomena.
• Flame Characteristics defines and explains how to measure flame height, length, depth, angle, and char height.
• Fire Behavior Prediction Systems briefly describes various computer models available for predicting fire behavior based on in fuels, weather, and topography. This section also presents fuel models.
• Fire Danger Rating Systems provides background of the various qualitative and numeric indices of fire potential used to estimate present and future fire danger for a given area, such as the National Fire Danger Rating System.