HexFire: A Flexible and Accessible Wildfire Simulator.As fire frequency and severity grow throughout the world, scientists working across a range of disciplines will increasingly need to incorporate wildfire models into their research.  Here we introduce a parsimonious wildfire simulator named HexFire that has been designed for rapid uptake by investigators who do not specialize in the mechanics of fire spread.  HexFire should be useful to such nonspecialists for representing the spread of fire, interactions with fuel breaks, and for integrating wildfire into other types of ecological models.  We provide a detailed description of the HexFire simulator's design and mechanisms.  Our heuristic fire spread examples highlight the flexibility inherent in the model system, demonstrate that HexFire can generate a wide range of emergent fire behaviors, and illustrate how HexFire might be coupled with other environmental models.  We also describe ways that HexFire itself might be altered or augmented.  HexFire can be used as a proxy for more detailed fire simulators and to assess the implications of wildfire for local ecological systems.  HexFire can also simulate fire interactions with fuel breaks and active fire suppression.
HexFire
HexFire: A Flexible and Accessible Wildfire Simulator.As fire frequency and severity grow throughout the world, scientists working across a range of disciplines will increasingly need to incorporate wildfire models into their research.  Here we introduce a parsimonious wildfire simulator named HexFire that has been designed for rapid uptake by investigators who do not specialize in the mechanics of fire spread.  HexFire should be useful to such nonspecialists for representing the spread of fire, interactions with fuel breaks, and for integrating wildfire into other types of ecological models.  We provide a detailed description of the HexFire simulator's design and mechanisms.  Our heuristic fire spread examples highlight the flexibility inherent in the model system, demonstrate that HexFire can generate a wide range of emergent fire behaviors, and illustrate how HexFire might be coupled with other environmental models.  We also describe ways that HexFire itself might be altered or augmented.  HexFire can be used as a proxy for more detailed fire simulators and to assess the implications of wildfire for local ecological systems.  HexFire can also simulate fire interactions with fuel breaks and active fire suppression.
HexFire