The numbers of fires detected on forest, savanna and transition lands during the 2002–10 biomass burning seasons in Amazonia are shown using fire count data and co-located land cover classifications from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The ratio of forest fires to savanna fires has varied substantially over the study period, with a maximum ratio of 0.65:1 in 2005 and ...

Interest in the use of summer fires to restore southern Great Plains prairie ecosystems infested with woody plants and cactus is increasing, but information regarding effects on target and nontarget plant species is needed before this practice can be recommended. We review effects of summer and winter fires on mortality and growth of honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), prickly pear (Opuntia p...

The effects of the fires that burned over 4.7 million ha of Indonesia’s tropical forests during 1997 and 1998 are largely unknown. We assess the immediate impacts of these fires on five forest areas representing several different habitats in Kalimantan 1-2 months after the fires went out. Comparisons of transects in burned and unburned forest areas were conducted at three sites: Tanjung Puting ...

With the Government of China's proposed Energy Efficiency Regulations (GB40411-2007), the implementation of external insulation systems will be mandatory in China. The frequent external insulation system fires cause huge numbers of casualties and extensive property damage and have rapidly become a new hot issue in construction evacuation safety in China. This study attempts to reconstruct an ac...

Vegetation burning is a global environmental threat that results in local ecological, economic and social impacts but also has large-scale implications for global change. The burning is usually a result of interacting factors such as climate, land use and vegetation type. Despite its importance as a factor shaping ecological, economic and social processes, countries highly vulnerable to climate...

Fire histories contribute important information to contemporary fire planning, however, our knowledge is not comprehensive geographically. We evaluated the influence of topography on fire history patterns in two contrasting landscapes within the Santa Catalina Mountains of southeastern Arizona. Multiple fire-scarred trees from randomly selected 2-ha plots were used to develop plot composite mea...

Square pool fires with length of 5, 7.5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 cm and rectangular pool fires with dimensions of 10 cm x 20 cm and 10 cm x 40 cm were burned in a wind tunnel, under a longitudinal air flow ranged from 0 to 3m/s with incremental change of about 0.5m/s. Methanol and gasoline were burned and compared, with results indicated that their burning rates showed different response to the l...

An analysis of forest fires by using a partitioned probability distribution is presented. Area burned during afire is fitted to a probability model. This model is partitioned into small, medium, and large fires. Conditional expected values are computed for each partition. Two cases are presented: the two-parameter Weibull and the Truncated Shifted Pareto probability models. The methodology allo...

Vehicle fires are a common occurrence, yet few studies have reported exposures associated with burning vehicles. This article presents an assessment of firefighters' potential for ultrafine and respirable particle exposure during vehicle fire suppression training. Fires were initiated within the engine compartment and passenger cabins of three salvaged vehicles, with subsequent water suppressio...

Recent publications from the National Academy of Sciences have called for additional foundational research in the field of firearm and toolmark analysis. We examined test fires from 10 pistol slides with consecutively manufactured breech faces. A total of nine test fires from each pistol slide, for a total of 90 test fired cartridge cases, were compared using confocal microscopy combined with t...