Drying of vegetation: how fast does the moisture go?

Abstract

Live and dead vegetation both need to be dried out prior to combustion in a bushfire. This article presents a simple model that accounts for the heating that occurs inside a cylindrical vegetation sample which has a prescribed initial moisture content and is subjected to a heating regime characteristic of a passing bushfire. The model allows us to predict the death or survival of live vegetation samples of any given diameter. It can also be extended to include any thermal properties and any shape for the vegetation sample.