Coupled Atmosphere-fire Behavior Model Sensitivity to Spatial Fuels Characterization

In the present study, we use various spatial fuels data within a coupled atmospherewildfire model to compare the simulated fire behavior for a small portion of the16,000 acre Calabasas fire that occurred on 21-22 October 1996 in the Santa Monica Mountains of Los Angeles County (Bamattre et al., 1997). The fire simulation investigates an intense fire that occurred in an isolated canyon around noon on 22 October. Although the Calabasas incident was a typical Santa Ana wind driven conflagration that burned from Highway 101 southwestward to the Pacific Ocean on 21 October, the offshore winds relented overnight, allowing residual fire lines to be affected by the normal onshore sea breeze during the morning of 22 October. The study area, Corral Canyon (Fig.1), is a north-south oriented 4-km long watershed running between the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains (~700 m above ground level) and the Pacific. At the bottom of the canyon is a narrow riparian zone resistant to burning. The steep slopes of the canyon were densely covered in typical coastal chaparral vegetation, with sagebrush/buckwheat dominant on the south-facing slopes and ceanothus on the north-facing slopes, interspersed with stands of chamise.