2020/05/13 by Lorenzo Palmieri, Henrik Jeldtoft Jensen, Palmieri, Lorenzo +1
Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Fire effects on ecosystems #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.comp-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2005.06387
18 pages, 10 figures
arxiv created 2020/05/13 · openalex publication_date 2020/05/13 · arxiv updated 2020/05/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Amongst the numerous models introduced with SOC, the Forest Fire Model (FFM) is particularly attractive for its close relationship to stochastic spreading, which is central to the study of systems as diverse as epidemics, rumours, or indeed, fires. However, since its introduction, the nature of the model's scale invariance has been controversial, and the lack of scaling observed in many studies diminished its theoretical attractiveness. In this study, we analyse the behaviour of the tree density, the average cluster size and the largest cluster and show that the model could be of high practical relevance for the activation dynamics seen in brain and rain studies. From this perspective, its peculiar scaling properties should be regarded as an asset rather than a limitation.