A process-based fire parameterization of intermediate complexity in a Dynamic Global Vegetation Model

Burned area in a grid cell is estimated by the product of fire counts and average burned area of a fire. The scheme comprises three parts: fire occurrence, fire spread, and fire impact.

In the fire occurrence part, fire counts rather than fire occurrence probability are calculated in order to capture the observed high burned area fraction in areas of high fire frequency and realize parameter calibration based on MODIS fire counts product. In the fire spread part, post-fire region of a fire is assumed to be elliptical in shape. Mathematical properties of ellipses and some mathematical derivations are applied to improve the equation and assumptions of an existing fire spread parameterization.