Abstract
This study is to predict fire spread behavior and burned area across two fire-prone landscapes with contrasting vegetation (Oak-dominated ecosystem in WI vs. pine-dominated ecosystem in NJ), fuel-type composition, and land-use history regulated by the effects of weather, landscape structure and land management by combining simulations from three models (FARSITE, HARVEST, AND FRAGSTATS) under different scenarios. The results demonstrate:\1- substantial differences in fire-spread patterns between the two landscapes were observed when holding weather conditions constant and excluding roads, indicating that landscape fragmentation is a main controlling factor on fire spread at the landscape level; ➁ roads functioning as barriers could significantly reduce the burned area from fire spread; and ➂ Harvesting effects showed different trends, depending on landscape fuel type composition and weather conditions. At 4% harvesting intensity, both clustered and dispersed methods showed no significant impact (a=0.01) on reducing the mean burned area across the more fragmented WI landscape, but showed significant effects on fire spread in the less fragmented NJ landscape in summer when weather was hot and dry.
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