Adjustment of the Grass Fuel Moisture Code for Grasslands in Southern Brazil

Abstract

Grasslands are one of the vegetation types most widely affected by wildfires in southern Brazil. It is a fire-dependent ecosystem and it is necessary to know the hourly fuel moisture variation for its management. The objective of this work is to fit Grass Fuel Moisture Code (GFMC) models to estimate the moisture content for the grassland of the State Park of Vila Velha, Paraná, Brazil. Data sampling to determine the hourly moisture content was performed during the winter of 2018 and divided into two campaigns of five days with stable weather conditions. Destructive samples were taken out for the sorption tests on climatic chambers to obtain the equilibrium moisture content and the time lag values. The fitted equilibrium moisture and time lag models were evaluated by residual distribution analysis, mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RSME) and coefficient of determination (R2). The fitted model performed better than the original GFMC model due to the obtained MAE, RSME and R2 values. The results showed that the fitted GFMC model is better to predict the fine fuel moisture for the region.

Keywords

• wildfires
• moisture content
• time lag
• equilibrium moisture content