TY - JOUR
T1 - Toward a Better Understanding of Wildfire Behavior in the Wildland-Urban Interface
T2 - A Case Study of the 2021 Marshall Fire
AU - Juliano, Timothy W.
AU - Lareau, Neil
AU - Frediani, Maria E.
AU - Shamsaei, Kasra
AU - Eghdami, Masih
AU - Kosiba, Karen
AU - Wurman, Joshua
AU - DeCastro, Amy
AU - Kosović, Branko
AU - Ebrahimian, Hamed
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Authors.
PY - 2023/5/28
Y1 - 2023/5/28
N2 - On 30 December 2021, the Marshall Fire devastated the Boulder, Colorado region. The fire initiated in fine fuels in open space just southeast of Boulder and spread rapidly due to the strong, downslope winds that penetrated into the Boulder Foothills. Despite the increasing occurrence of wildland-urban interface (WUI) disasters, many questions remain about how fires progress through vegetation and the built environment. To help answer these questions for the Marshall Fire, we use a coupled fire-atmosphere model and Doppler on Wheels (DOW) observations to study the fire's progression as well as examine the physical drivers of its spread. Evaluation of the model using the DOW suggests that the model is able to capture general characteristics of the flow field; however, it does not produce as robust of a hydraulic jump as the one observed. Our results highlight limitations of the model that should be addressed for successful WUI simulations.
AB - On 30 December 2021, the Marshall Fire devastated the Boulder, Colorado region. The fire initiated in fine fuels in open space just southeast of Boulder and spread rapidly due to the strong, downslope winds that penetrated into the Boulder Foothills. Despite the increasing occurrence of wildland-urban interface (WUI) disasters, many questions remain about how fires progress through vegetation and the built environment. To help answer these questions for the Marshall Fire, we use a coupled fire-atmosphere model and Doppler on Wheels (DOW) observations to study the fire's progression as well as examine the physical drivers of its spread. Evaluation of the model using the DOW suggests that the model is able to capture general characteristics of the flow field; however, it does not produce as robust of a hydraulic jump as the one observed. Our results highlight limitations of the model that should be addressed for successful WUI simulations.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85160418053
U2 - 10.1029/2022GL101557
DO - 10.1029/2022GL101557
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85160418053
SN - 0094-8276
VL - 50
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
IS - 10
M1 - e2022GL101557
ER -