Swedish wildfire behaviour

Recent years, Sweden has experienced a series of large wildfires, exemplified by the 2014 Västmanland fire and the 2018 Ljusdal fire complex. In a changing climate, with longer and more severe fire seasons, it is reasonable to expect that such events will occur more frequently, emphasizing the need for the municipal rescue services to efficiently prepare and respond to wildfires. This project therefore aims to quantify wildfire behaviour in typical Swedish fuels to generate a knowledge-base for future planning and decision-making.

The project includes two phases:

First, a series of field and lab experiments are conducted to assess fuel load, moisture content, rate of spread, flame length etc in different stand types. Fire behaviour is dependent on weather, terrain and fuel. Whereas weather and terrain are general parameters, fuel properties vary both between and within biomes. This project investigates how some of our most common stand types carry fire under different weather and slope conditions.

Second, the measured data is used to provide and validate Swedish fuel models that can be incorporated in wildfire modelling systems. Wildfire models serve several purposes, e.g. (1) as tools in fire-fighting training, (2) to facilitate for decision-makers to analyze, assess and plan for events, or (3) to estimate intensity and assess spread rate during an event.