When It's Hot, It's Hot... Or Maybe It's Not! (Surface Flaming May Not Portend Extensive Soil Heating)
Abstract
Fire effects on aplant community, soil, and air are not apparent when judged only by surface fire intensity. The fire severity or fire impact can be described by the temperatures reached within the forest floor and the duration of heating experienced in the vegetation, forest floor, and underlying mineral soil. Temporal distributions of temperatures illustrate heat flow in duff and mineral soil in three instrumented plots: two with slash fuel over moist duff and one with litter fuel over dry duff. Fires in the two slash fuel plots produced substantial flame lengths but minimal heating in the underlying mineral soil. In contrast, smoldering combustion in the dry duff plot produced long duration heating with nearly complete duff consumption and lethal temperatures at the mineral soil surface. Moisture content of duff and soil were key variables for determining f i e impact on the forest floor.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The magnitude of fire effects on soils depends on above-ground fire behaviour, organic horizon depth and moisture content, and the physical properties of mineral soil.
“The magnitude of fire effects on soils depends on above-ground fire behaviour (Massman, 2012), organic horizon depth and moisture content (Hartford & Frandsen, 1992) and the physical properties of mineral soil (Giovannini, Lucchesi, & Giachetti, 1988).”
From Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers (2020) · cites this paper as Hartford & Frandsen, 1992
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers
McLauchlan, K. K., Higuera, P. E., Miesel, J., Rogers, B. M., Schweitzer, J., Shuman, J. K., Tepley, A. J., Varner, J. M., Veblen, T. T., Adalsteinsson, S. A., et al. (2020) · Journal of Ecology · doi:10.1111/1365-2745.13403 · Cited by 729 · see citing works
“The magnitude of fire effects on soils depends on above-ground fire behaviour (Massman, 2012), organic horizon depth and moisture content (Hartford & Frandsen, 1992) and the physical properties of mineral soil (Giovannini, Lucchesi, & Giachetti, 1988).”
Ecological effects of prescribed fire season: a literature review and synthesis for managers
Knapp, E. E., Estes, B. L., & Skinner, C. N. (2009) · doi:10.2737/psw-gtr-224 · Cited by 286 · see citing works
Effects of charcoal production on maize yield, chemical properties and texture of soil
Oguntunde, P. G., Fosu, M., Ajayi, A. E., & van de Giesen, N. (2004) · Biology and Fertility of Soils · doi:10.1007/s00374-003-0707-1 · Cited by 254 · see citing works
Schwilk, D. W., Knapp, E. E., Ferrenberg, S. M., Keeley, J. E., & Caprio, A. C. (2006) · Forest Ecology and Management · doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2006.05.036 · Cited by 110 · see citing works
Pingree, M. R. A., & Kobziar, L. N. (2019) · Forest Ecology and Management · doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2018.10.032 · Cited by 79 · see citing works
- Authors
- Hartford, R., & Frandsen, W.
- Venue
- International Journal of Wildland Fire
- Publisher
- CSIRO Publishing
- Published
- 1992-09-01
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 139-144
- ISSN
- 1049-8001 (ISSN-L)
- 1448-5516
- OpenAlex
- W2056795287
- Cited by
- 220
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 9
- FWCI
- 1.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- International Journal of Wildland Fire (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality › Fire dynamics and safety research
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Rangeland and Wildlife Management
- Keywords
- fire severity, soil heating, duff, mineral soils, smoldering combustion, soil moisture, heat flow, forest floor, flame length, fire effects on soil
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
