Fire Behavior at Kuan-Kreng Peat Forest, Nakorn Sri Thammarat Province

Kuan-Kreng swamp forest located in southern Thailand and covers an area of 24,000 ha. About 2,100 ha burned in 2012. These fires lead to the changes in ecosystem structures and functions. Thus, fire management is very important. Unfortunately, peat fire information for Thailand has never been systematically investigated. This research aims to learn about forest fire and fuel characteristics in Kuan-Kreng swamp forest. Twelve plots of 30x30 m which consisted of 4 plots in lowland Malaleuca's stand, 4 plots in upland stand and 4 plots in open grassland. The average Pre-burn fuel load for lowland, upland and grassland sites were 11.96, 21.20 and 13.73 ton/ha, respectively. Undergrowth litter contain the highest heat value (4289.19 ca/ g), while heat content of peat soil was lowest (3280.73 cal/g). All of fire behavior descriptors were highest in grassland and lowest in lowland, ROS in grassland was highest, though there were non-significant differences. FH and FL were significant highest in grassland. However, FH and FL were not significantly difference between Malaleuca sites. FI in this study was highest in grassland (720.6 kW m-1), and it was lowest in lowland site (87.5 kW m-1). However, FI varied from plot to plot, resulting in non-significant differences between sites.