How do fire danger ratings compare with fire occurrence? Funded as part of an ERC Starter Grant members of the wildFIRE Lab are examining whether fire danger ratings correspond to fire occurrences. Our focus thus far has been looking at the North American Fire Danging Rating System, that has a long history of operational use.…
The ChaRoFlux Project: A new quantitative fire severity metric? Reducing the impact of wildfires on wildland areas is a core goal of management practices that seek to protect the provision of ecosystems services and natural biodiversity. The different nature of fires means that different fire behaviours are expected to have various influences on fire severity.…
Project ImpCHAR – characterising the energy flux from small impact cratering processes Estimates of the current impact flux on Earth show that within the lifetime of our species it is likely that a significant meteroid impact will hit a populated area. Small meteroids (<50 m in diameter) that are large enough to reach the Earth’s…
Soot Aerodynamic Size Selection for Optical Properties Atmospheric particles that absorb sunlight have an important influence on the Earth’s climate but quantifying this has been difficult because climate models use uncertain, simplified treatments of aerosol optical properties that demonstrate little consistency between top-down and bottom-up assessments. SASSO will address this longstanding knowledge gap by uniquely…
The impact of plant evolution on fire behaviour European Research Council (ERC) Starter Grant – 1,519,640 euro – PI C Belcher Without fire life on our planet would not be as we know it today. Throughout Earth’s long history fire has been both a driver and a consequence of evolutionary innovations throughout the history of…
Wildfires really do happen in the UK On average there are: o 32,000 vegetation fires (wildfires) in the UK per yr o Wildfires burned 37,000 hectareso Wildfires lasted 300,000 hourso Response costs of £55 million a year Data: forestry commission for time period 2010-2018. The UK has a relatively unique set of ecosystems, that are…
Project FORCHAR is a new exciting project recently funded an ERC Proof of Concept Grant. The wildFIRE Lab is working with project partners FIUK on Project FORCHAR Fire Investigations are undertaken to determine the origin and cause of fires in housing or commercial properties, to identify whether there may be a need for criminal investigation,…
JET – Integrated Understanding of the Early Jurassic Earth System and Timescale NERC £1,802,014 plus $1,500,000 – S. Hesselbo (PI), T. Lenton & C. Belcher and 19 project partners More information
Smouldering Earth This research focuses on a form of combustion called smouldering and its propagation through organic soils, such as peat. Our research aims to improve our understanding of smouldering fire phenomena in natural peatlands, and eventually inform the policy and management of smouldering peatland fires. We run small-scale laboratory experiments where we mimic the…
wildFIRE Lab 