Consequences of Fire and Fire Surrogate Treatments: The Central Appalachian Plateau Site - Animations and Videos - REMA

Zaleski State Forest

About the Fire

Location: Zaleski State Forest, Ohio
Date of burn: April 4, 2001
Forest Type: Oak-Hickory Forest
Relief: Rugged/Hilly with fairly steep slopes

Note: The unit was fired using three firing teams, two working along the north and south edges of the unit, one firing through the center of the unit. Each firing team used two or three drip torches allowing them to light several lines of fire parallel to the control lines.

 

Thin/Burn	Start	End
Ignition:	13:00 hours EST	15:53 hours EST
Temperature:	59 F	64 F
Relative Humidity:	35%	23%
Winds:	S at 3-4 mph	E at 4mph
Notes: Area had received a light dusting of snow on April 1st (0.5”) and less than 0.1” of rain on the morning of the 3rd . The warm temperatures and dry air mass that moved in on the 3rd allowed the fuels to dry quickly. The site layout allowed burning both the burn only and thin and burn units together as one block. The thin and burn side, burned fairly well due to being exposed to the sun and being mainly on a southwest facing slope. A couple of spot fires occurred on the north side of the burn only side of the unit. The use of interior ignition aided in building heat in the unit and increased the intensity of the fire across the unit. Information provided by Mike Bowden, Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources

View the animation

About the Animation

• The animation is based on "real" temperatures recorded on HOBO recorders from 126 thermocouple locations in Zaleski State Forest.
• The actual temperature data were recorded at 2 sec intervals from 25 cm above the ground surface. These data were sliced into 248 time slices corresponding to 30 sec intervals.
• However, the actual time-step in the animation is at 2.5 minute time intervals (The "Tsxx" in the animation) to reduce loading time.
• The temperatures were interpolated using inverse weighted distance using 2 points in the search radius.
• The maps were created with ArcView 3.2a Avenue script.
• As the area gets burned (ie., "affected" by the burn since the area burned is dependent on the accuracy of the interpolation), the color changes from lightbrown to gray.
• The color scheme is self-explanatory, with the brighter reds indicating hotter burns.
• The statistics for the temperature (in deg C) across all 126 points are:

1st Qu.	Median	Mean	3rd Qu.	Std.Dev
101.50000	150.00000	154.60000	192.10000	74.27343

Min	Max
18.60000	414.60000

• Earlier studies have shown that temperatures above 150 deg C will topkill most saplings (< 10 cm diameter). See the legend below: