Online PyroLife Fire Course  – 2021

Fire in the landscape: Introduction to biophysical aspects 

25 January – 5 February 2021 afternoons (CET)

Online PhD course

Course Information:

Introduction

Integrated fire management includes social, economic, cultural and ecological values in each step of the management cycle (prevention, preparedness, response, mitigation and recovery), and therefore requires integrated and interdisciplinary training of our new leaders in fire. To provide this integrated training, PyroLife organised four PhD courses: three on the understanding of fire: 1) climate, risks and impact; 2) human dimensions and planning aspects; and 3) science-policy interaction. These three courses were followed by a fourth course: 4) integrated fire management, where the way forward towards building and implementing an integrated fire management was discussed and developed. Here we feature the first course of this four PhD course series, focusing on the biophysical aspects of fire in the landscape

Target audience

A diverse group of people pursuing their PhD degree. This course covered the basics of biophysical aspects of fire in the landscape; hence it was targeted towards PhD students/candidates working on integrated fire management as well as to PhD students/candidates working on a specific biophysical aspect that want to put their understanding into a broader multidisciplinary context.

Overall learning goal

To develop a broad understanding on the basics of the biophysical aspects of fire in the landscape, and to be able to link the causes of fire in the landscape to the impact they have, both on the way fires are managed as their impact of the environment.

As such it was a multidisciplinary course, focusing on four modules: fire engineering, weather and climate, fire management and risk assessment (incl. suppression, mitigation), and fire impacts on the natural environment.

Description

The first step to come up with new ways of managing fire risk and its impact to the environment, to promote landscape resilience to fire and to reduce the vulnerability of communities, is to understand how fire operates. This course was therefore focused on the biophysical aspects of fire in the landscape.

The course first followed the concept of the two fire triangles. Triangle 1: What do you need for a fire: Heat, oxygen and fuel; and fire triangle 2: how does fire move: fuels; topography; weather and climate. Students learned how these concepts are related to fire danger ratings that are used in early warning systems and preparedness tools. Since weather and climate strongly determine how fire itself behaves, we spent time on the most recent insights into how types of fires, such as extreme fires, are linked to weather. They also learned to recognise different types of landscape fire.

We also covered how fires can be controlled and how their effects can be mitigated: what firefighting techniques are there, and when they are used during an incident. How fuel loads can be managed via prescribed burning, grazing, and mechanical removal. Then, the impact of fires on the natural environment were shortly introduced.

Via group work, students assessed how you can link the knowledge on the fire triangles to the way fires can be managed (fire suppression, fuel management, risk assessment and/or the physical impact on the environment (i.e. linking modules 1+2 with 3 and 4). They searched for key papers, which research groups are playing a key role in the research, and for whom what knowledge is useful in order to learn how to live with fire. They also indicated which PhD projects can benefit from exchanging knowledge from other participants.

Course Structure:

• Fire triangle 1 and parts of triangle 2:
  • Engineering side of Fire
  • Ignitions
  • Fuels & topography
• Fire regimes

• Understanding the concepts behind fire danger ratings
• To be able to identify different types of fire, and the weather and climate conditions that trigger them
• Understand the basic components determining the wildland-urban interphase

• Fire suppression strategies
• Fuel management
• Risk assessment and mitigation

• Impact on soil & Water
• Ecological impacts
• Smoke and emissions

Useful Information