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An introduction to wildfire ignition, fire spread, and fire suppression
Francesco Restuccia, Lecturer in Engineering at King’s College London, and Guillermo Rein, Professor of Fire Science at Imperial College London, discuss wildfire ignition, fire spread, and fire suppression. They look at problems such as the wildland urban interface (WUI), fire spread, fire suppression, ignition criteria, to have a better fundamental understanding of how these fires […]
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KCL researchers take flight in ‘SwathSense 2021’ project to improve the way Land Surface Temperature is measured
KCL researchers, including members of Leverhulme Wildfires, successfully carried out an airborne campaign last month – ‘SwathSense 2021’ – with the aim of improving the way land surface temperature is measured. Land surface temperature (LST) can be very different to air temperature and is a key parameter related to many Earth system processes, for example […]
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NCEO Researchers track effects of the devastating Western North America heatwave
NCEO Researchers, including Leverhulme Wildfires researchers at King’s College London, used European and American satellites to help contextualise the exceptional heatwave which has recently enveloped Western Canada and the North-Western United States. Read the article here Image: IMS land surface temperatures on 29th June 2021. Temperatures are in Kelvin
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Smoke increases fatigue in flying butterflies
Landscape fires burn across millions of square kilometres of Earth’s landscapes each year. Though each of these fires maybe individually small, the very large numbers of fires burning simultaneously can seriously degrade local and regional air quality by releasing a complex mixture of gases and aerosols. These smoke emissions may not only have significant effects […]
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Investigating fundamental wildfire drivers
by Alex Kuhn-Regnier Alex Kuhn-Regnier is a PhD student at Imperial College London based in the Department of Physics. He investigates wildfire models and how to improve the representation of the ecological impacts of future wildfire changes. My PhD began by asking the question “What are the fundamental drivers of wildfires?” Far from being […]
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KCL researchers in new 10-million-euro project to tackle forest fires in Europe
Image: A forest fire burning in Enskogen, as seen by Sentinel-2 on 16th July (Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2018], processed by the Copernicus Support Office) King’s College London will be one of 39 partners from across the world involved in the new research project FirEUrisk, starting this month, which will develop a science-based strategy […]
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Spontaneous ignition of smouldering peat fires (and how to simulate them in the field)
Figure 1: Smouldering wildfire of a carbon-rich soil system in Las Tablas de Daimiel (Photo by Dr G Rein, 2009). Researchers at Imperial College Hazelab, including members of Leverhulme Wildfires, have recently published a new paper developing a multi-step reaction model to study the potential of peatland fires starting from self-heating ignition, in the International […]
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Landscape fires estimated to cause over 600 thousand premature deaths each year, many in children under five
Photo: Smoke from surrounding peatland fires often pollutes the air in the city of Palangkarya (Kalimantan, Indonesia) – home to around 250,000 people. During these events. levels of airborne fine particulate matter (PM2.5) reach many times those considered extremely hazardous to health. Ambient (outdoor) air pollution is the world’s greatest environmental health risk, and a […]
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King’s researchers contribute to new study that says Australia’s ‘Black Summer’ should be a wake-up call
“Satellite data analysis by our researchers revealed the severity of bushfires in Australia during 2019 to 2020 compared to previous years” – Leverhulme Wildfires researchers at King’s College London contribute to an ANU-led study looking at bushfires during the Black Summer of 2019 to 2020.
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Quantifying past fire-biodiversity relationships in European Landscapes
Photo: wildfire at Eagle Creek Trailhead, USA. Credit: Luke Flynt (Unsplash) Jacob Mercer is a Leverhulme Wildfires 2020 summer placement student, reading Mathematics and Statistics at Worcester College, Oxford. Through the Natural Environment Research Council research experience placement scheme, Jacob had the opportunity to undertake a project supervised by Dr. Daniele Colombaroli at Royal Holloway, […]
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