firebehavioR (version 0.1.2)

fireIndex: Fire weather indices based on static weather observations

Description

Methods to estimate fire weather indices using static weather observations.

Usage

fireIndex(temp, u, rh, fuel = 4.5, cure = 100)

Arguments

temp

a numeric vector of air temperatures (C)

u

a numeric vector of wind speeds (km/hr)

rh

a numeric vector of relative humidities (%)

fuel

a numeric vector of available fuel load (Mg/ha), defaults to 4.5

cure

a numeric vector for proportion of cured grass (%), defaults to 100

Value

a data frame of static fire weather index values

Details

This function computes seven methods to estimate static fire weather indices: the Angstrom Index, the Chandler Burning Index, the Hot Dry Windy Index, the Fuel Moisture Index, the Fosberg Fire Weather Index, the MacArthur Grassland Mark 4 Index, and the MacArthur Grassland Mark 5 Index. Each of these are static in that values are derived using a daily weather summary and do not consider weather during prior days. temp, rh and u are required for all methods. The latter two indices also use fuel, and the Grassland Mark 4 Index uses cure. Defaults for fuel and cure are provided, but can be specified by the user. Sharples (2009a, b) review all of the methods.

References

Sharples, J.J., McRae, R.H.D., Weber, R.O. and Gill, A.M., 2009a. A simple index for assessing fuel moisture content. Environmental Modelling & Software, 24(5):637-646. Sharples, J.J., McRae, R.H.D., Weber, R.O. and Gill, A.M., 2009b. A simple index for assessing fire danger rating. Environmental Modelling & Software. 24(6):764-774.

Examples

# NOT RUN {
#Example using RAWS meteorological station data
data(rrRAWS)
rrRAWS.daily =   rrRAWS[format(strptime(rrRAWS$dateTime, "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M"), "%H:%M")=="14:35",]
fireIndex(temp=rrRAWS.daily$temp_c, u= rrRAWS.daily$windSpeed_kmh, rh = rrRAWS.daily$rh)
# }