Study on Eight Tree Species ’ Combustibility

Fuelbreak play an important role in fuel management and landscape system management. The paper analyses the differences of ten tree species ’ combustibility and effectiveness of fuelbreak based on the combustion experiments, measuring microstructures of leaf and branch, and wildland fire experiment. Leaves and branch are collected for experients. The species includes Schima superba, Camellia sinensis, Camellia oleifera, Viburnum amabuki, Photinia serrulata, Ligustrum lucidum, Pinus massoniana and Cunninghamia lanceolata. Cone calorimeter is applied to assess thermal characteristics of leaves by comparing their thermogravimetry, heat release rate and carbon dioxide and carbonic oxide release. Paraffin cut sheet of leaf and branch of those tree species were made for organism ratio measuring. And a wild fire experiment has been done in the suburb of Guangzhou, China. We measured the fuel loads and their distribution in the stand of pine and fuelbreak before and after fire. The weather and fire behavior are also measured to compute fire intensity. Conclusions include: i) A fire potential index (FPI, which is the ratio of ignition time to peak value of heat release rate）was compute for comparing the combustibility differences of the tree species