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Science 18 September 1998:
Vol. 281. no. 5384, pp. 1840 - 1842
DOI: 10.1126/science.281.5384.1840
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Reports

Forest Fires: An Example of Self-Organized Critical Behavior

Bruce D. Malamud, * Gleb Morein, Donald L. Turcotte

Despite the many complexities concerning their initiation and propagation, forest fires exhibit power-law frequency-area statistics over many orders of magnitude. A simple forest fire model, which is an example of self-organized criticality, exhibits similar behavior. One practical implication of this result is that the frequency-area distribution of small and medium fires can be used to quantify the risk of large fires, as is routinely done for earthquakes.

Department of Geological Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-1504, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Bruce{at}Malamud.Com

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