Three Parts of the Thesis

1. Your major research question

What role do turbulent wind flows through dense forest canopies have on wildfire spread?

2. A possible answer

Wildfires are sensitive to small-scale turbulence structures

3. A body of evidence to support the answer

A paper by Desai 2023, shows that wildfires in forest canopies are influenced by turbulence. A paper by Cervantes 2023 shows that embers, which are burning materials that can cause spot fires (a mechanism of wildfire spread), are shown to be sensitive to turbulence intensity.

4. The major warrants

Large-scale wildfire experiments are difficult to conduct, and small-scale laboratory experiments may not show realistic large-scale turbulence behavior. This calls for the use of numerical simulations, however, there are high computational costs in running high-resolution simulations.

5. The objections you will have to rebut

Numerical simulations require lots of experimental validation to prove they are accurate.

6. The objections you cannot rebut

Numerical models are only able to approximate what happens in reality and can not give an exact solution.