Atmospheric Turbulence Observations in the Vicinity of Surface Fires in Forested Environments

• DOI: 10.1175/jamc-d-17-0146.1
• Publication Date: 2017-09-18T20:03:56Z
• Authors: Warren E. Heilman; Xindi Bian; Kenneth L. Clark; Nicholas S. Skowr...; John L. Hom; Michael R. Gallagher
• Keywords: Atmospheric instability; Fire regime

Abstract Ambient and fire-induced atmospheric turbulence in the vicinity of wildland fires can affect behavior those dispersion smoke. The presence forest overstory vegetation further complicate evolution local regimes their interaction with spreading smoke plumes. Previous observational studies fire events forested environments have shown that energy anisotropy line exhibit temporal spatial variability influenced by vegetation. This study builds on previous to examine during two environments, an emphasis effects canopies budgets, skewness turbulent velocity distributions, stability–anisotropy variations before, during, after fire-front-passage periods. Analyses indicate tends persist throughout vertical extent layers even highly buoyant periods, horizontal perturbations dominating over perturbations. analyses also suggest periods before fire-front passage be very different respect how diffusion shear production concurrently within canopy layer. In addition, distribution carried out this a substantial effect daytime distributions typically observed inside layers.