Review of wildfire modeling considering effects on land surfaces

Abstract

Wildfires are part of the natural cycle of life in vegetated regions. The apparent increase in size and frequency of recent years reflects land management legacy, expansion of human activity, and changes in climatic conditions. The primary objectives of the review are: (1) to introduce hydrologists, soil scientists and ecologists to principles and advances in modeling of wildfire dynamics and rates of spread to improve understanding of capabilities and limitations offered by modern wildfire models; (2) to highlight persistent omissions of wildfire effects on soil processes and how soil and hydrology communities can harness wildfire models to bridge these gaps and provide the necessary boundary conditions for quantifying thermal alterations of soils. The review aims to enhance cross-disciplinary understanding critical for advancing quantitative representation of wildfire impacts on soil and hydrologic processes and formulating boundary conditions for subsequent hydro-ecological recovery of fire-affected landscapes. The review presents key elements used to represent wildfire characteristics, processes and metrics considered in wildfire science. We then provide an overview of wildfire modeling approaches and models used for research and for prescribed burning planning that include wildfire behavior models, semi-physical and mechanistic large eddy simulation models. We highlight key features and assumptions, and common applications of each class of models and their inputs (spatially resolved databases of fuel maps, digital elevation, land cover, and weather). The second section of the review proposes a path towards building a systematic framework for quantifying soil, ecological and hydrological wildfire-induced alterations to parameterize post-fire hydrologic responses and predict landscape recovery rates across seasonal to climatic time scales.