what is the nature and character of fire?

A fire regime describes the characteristics of fire and how it interacts with a particular ecosystem.Its "severity" is a term that ecologists use to refer to the impact that a fire has on an ecosystem. Ecologists can define this in many ways, but one way is through an estimate of plant mortality. Fire can burn at three levels. Ground fires will burn through soil that is rich in organic matter. Surface fires will burn through dead plant material that is lying on the ground. Crown fires will burn in the tops of shrubs and trees. Ecosystems may experience predominantly one of these fire regimes, or a mix of all three.

Fires will often break out during a dry season, but in some areas wildfires may also commonly occur during a time of year when lightning is prevalent. The frequency over a span of years at which fire will occur at a particular location is a measure of how common wildfires are in a given ecosystem. It is either defined as the average interval between fires at a given site, or the average interval between fires in an equivalent specified area.

Defined as the energy released per unit length of fire line (kW m^-1), wildfire intensity can be estimated either as the product of the linear spread rate (m s^-1), the low heat of combustion (kJ kg^-1) and the combusted fuel mass per unit area, or it can be estimated from the flame length.

Thank You

Ruchi

Askiitians Faculty