Burn pasture

CLEM.Activities.PastureActivityBurn

An activity to burn a particular pasture (managed fire)

Fire management is a critical aspect of many grazing enterprises whether wildfire or managed fire for clearing old pasture and weed management. This activity provides the means to burn a pasture thereby removing the biomass and generating greenhouse gases. There is means to simulate the appearance of green pick or change in pasture production after the fire, with the next pasture growth provided to the model starting to replace the lost pasture.

Future activities may add better fire management with changing risk of uncontrolled wildfire based on previous fire management and resource availability.

The following parameters are used to define this activity

The pasture to burn.

This parameter points to one of the defined Graze food store types in the Graze food store group of the Resources available for this simulation. This entry is a drop down list of available Graze food store types.

Fire will not spread (or carry) if there is too much moisture in the fuel. As the pasture biomass provides the fuel for a fire to burn, we are able to define the minimum proportion green material below which a fire will spread and the pasture will burn. More detailed fire spread algorithms can be added in future. This value and the current amount of green material in the pasture will determine if the fire is possible.

Methane produced by burning will be calculated and reported to a Greenhouse gas type store for methane. This entry is a drop-down list of available Greenhouse gas type resources of the Greenhouse gases available for this simulation.

Optional This process will be ignored if "Use store named Methane if present" is selected and that store is not present in the simulation.

This property also lets you use the default Greenhouse gas type store named Methane if present when "Use store named Methane if present" is selected (default) or the entry is blank.

Nitrous oxide produced by burning will be calculated and reported to a Greenhouse gas type store for nitrous oxide. This entry is a drop-down list of available Greenhouse gas type resources of the Greenhouse gases available for this simulation.

Optional This process will be ignored if "Use store named N2O if present" is selected and that store is not present in the simulation.

This property also lets you use the default Greenhouse gas type store named N2O if present when "Use store named N2O if present" is selected (default) or the entry is blank.

This parameter will determine what action is taken if there are insufficient resources to perform this activity.

You can report an error and stop the simulation, skip this activity or use the resources available. See What to do when resources are limiting

The following components will add additional functionality to this activity

If you provide a Greenhouse gases store with Greenhouse gas type components named ("Methane" and "N2O") the emissions from burning will be calculated and tracked. Alternatively these gas stores can be identified in the properties above.

Adding a Labour requirement below this activity will mean that labour is calculated and required to undertake the task.

This activity will occur in every time-step unless timers are used to restrict this activity.

This activity is performed during the Get Resources Required event of the setup and time-step events. This is the standard, monthly clock event by which CLEM activities request resources and perform actions based on the resources provided, therefore this activity will compete with most activities in the time-step with their location in the simulation tree determining the order they are processed (this includes activities located on other CLEM and Market components). If this activity relies on another activity having been performed, or other activities rely on this activity in the time-step, ensure it has been performed in the correct order based on it's position in the simulation tree.

See also