Figure 2.

Three patterns reproduced by generic forest fire models that include a ‘memory effect’, i.e. local flammability that depends on the time since the site last burned, and assume fire spread is only limited by fuel availability. (a) Shape indices of fires of different size classes. (b) Hump-shaped relationship between disturbance intensity (average annual area burnt) and the diversity of successional stages. (c) Heavy-tailed, power-law-like frequency distribution of fire sizes. (Adapted from Zinck & Grimm [35]; © 2009 The University of Chicago). (b) Squares, data: Suffling (1988), Ontario; thick line, least-squares fit.