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Author(s):
Marc-Andre Parisien, Alan A. Ager, Ana M. G. Barros, Denyse A. Dawe, Sandy Erni, Mark A. Finney, Charles W. McHugh, Carol Miller, Sean A. Parks, Karen L. Riley, Karen C. Short, Christopher A. Stockdale, Xianli Wang, Ellen Whitman
Year Published:

Cataloging Information

Topic(s):
Fire Behavior
Simulation Modeling

NRFSN number: 21522
Record updated:

Monte Carlo simulations using wildland fire spread models have been conducted to produce numerical estimates of fire likelihood, project potential fire effects, and produce event sets of realistic wildfires (Parisien et al., 2019). The application of these methods has greatly expanded over the last few decades as a result of increased computation capabilities, available data, and our fundamental understanding of landscape fire dynamics. In their recently published article, Beverly and McLoughlin (2019) attempt to assess the accuracy of fire likelihood outputs (hereafter “burn probability” [BP]) they produced for five large areas in Alberta, Canada, by testing the “correspondence between observed burned areas and pre-fire burn probability maps” in order to “explore how the expectations of decision-makers influenced our assessment of map accuracy.” To do so, they superimposed BP estimates computed with the Burn-P3 fire simulation model (Parisien et al., 2005) with areas recently burned by wildfire from the reference year used in Burn-P3 until 2017. Their results show a moderate statistical preference of recent burns for high-probability areas in three study areas and no preference in the remaining two. This leads them to conclude that “the use of these maps for research or other applications should be approached with caution and consideration of their shortcomings and apparent limitations.” In dismissing the accuracy of the BP estimates, they are sending an erroneous message to managers and the research community that BP maps are not useful.

Citation

Parisien, Marc-Andre; Ager, Alan A.; Barros, Ana M.; Dawe, Denyse; Erni, Sandy; Finney, Mark A.; McHugh, Charles W.; Miller, Carol; Parks, Sean A.; Riley, Karin L.; Short, Karen C.; Stockdale, Christopher A.; Wang, Xianli; Whitman, Ellen. 2020. Commentary on the article “Burn probability simulation and subsequent wildland fire activity in Alberta, Canada - Implications for risk assessment and strategic planning” by J. L. Beverly and N. McLoughlin. Forest Ecology and Management. 460: 117698. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2019.117698

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