Self-organized criticality of forest fire in China

Self-organized criticality (SOC) of forest fire is studied from an analysis of a large series of forest-fire records from 1950 to 1989 in China. The time-variant, scale-invariant characteristics of SOC of forest fire in China are analyzed in detail. The deviations between the occurrence frequency of very large fires and the power-law relation are explained by the forest-fire model with tree immunity. Actual forest-fire records are compared with the simulation results of a self-organized critical forest-fire model. It is shown that the forest-fire model applies well to explain the SOC characteristics of a forest fire. SOC characteristics have practical implications on forest-fire protection.