Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The diverse types of Masson’s pine stands can be simplified into two subtypes by using inflammability as the main criteria: Masson’s pine-shrub forests and Masson’s pine-fern forests. The initial burning of Masson’s pine is dictated by the bole height of the targeted stands. Forests lower than 4 meters can not provide enough gaps to prevent surface fires spreading into the crown and thus are not suitable for understory burning. The death height and scorching height have the following correlation: Y?3X0.873 where Y stands for the death height (m) and X stands for scorching height with the coefficient being 0.6. In no cases should the flames of the prescribed burning exceed 4 meters, otherwise, the damages of the intensive fires to the basal meristems will cause unacceptable tree mortality. To minimize soil erosion and tree mortality, 5-15% of patchiness, 60-8-% of surface fuel removal rate and 5-10% of tree mortality should be the indicators of proper burning.