Wildfire Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about wildfires

Wildfire Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is a wildfire?
A: A wildfire or wildland fire is a fire in an area of combustible vegetation occurring in rural areas.

Fossil charcoal indicates that wildfires began soon after the appearance of what?
A: Terrestrial plants 420 million years ago.

Wildfire's occurrence throughout the history of terrestrial life invites conjecture that fire must have had pronounced evolutionary effects on what?
A: Most ecosystems' flora and fauna.

Earth is an intrinsically flammable planet owing to its what?
A: Cover of carbon-rich vegetation, seasonally dry climates, atmospheric oxygen, and widespread lightning and volcanic ignitions.

Wildfires can be characterized in terms of what?
A: The cause of ignition, their physical properties, the combustible material present, and the effect of weather on the fire.

Wildfires can cause damage to property and human life, though naturally occurring wildfires may have beneficial effects on what?
A: Native vegetation, animals, and ecosystems that have evolved with fire.

High-severity wildfire creates complex early seral forest habitat (also called "snag forest habitat"), which often has higher what?
A: Species richness and diversity than unburned old forest.

Many plant species depend on the effects of fire for what?
A: For growth and reproduction.

Wildfire behavior and severity result from the combination of factors such as what?
A: Available fuels, physical setting, and weather.

Over the years strategies for what have varied?
A: Wildfire prevention, detection, and suppression.

One common and inexpensive technique is controlled burning which is what?
A: Intentionally igniting smaller fires to minimize the amount of flammable material available for a potential wildfire.

Vegetation may be burned periodically to maintain what?
A: High species diversity and limit the accumulation of plants and other debris that may serve as fuel.

Fuels may also be removed by logging, but fuels treatments and thinning have no effect on severe fire behavior when under what?
A: Extreme weather conditions.

Building codes in fire-prone areas typically require that structures be built of what?
A: Flame-resistant materials.

The most common direct human causes of wildfire ignition includes what?
A: Arson, discarded cigarettes, power-line arcs (as detected by arc mapping), and sparks from equipment.

Forested areas cleared by logging encourage the dominance of what?
A: Flammable grasses.

Abandoned logging roads overgrown by vegetation may act as what?
A: Fire corridors.

Annual grassland fires in southern Vietnam stem in part from the destruction of forested areas by what?
A: US military herbicides, explosives, and mechanical land-clearing and -burning operations during the Vietnam War.

In Canada and northwest China, what operates as the major source of ignition?
A: Lightning.

In Africa, Central America, Fiji, Mexico, New Zealand, South America, and Southeast Asia, wildfires can be attributed to what?
A: Human activities such as agriculture, animal husbandry, and land-conversion burning.

In China and in the Mediterranean Basin what is a major cause of wildfires?
A: Human carelessness.

In the United States and Australia, the source of wildfires can be traced both to lightning strikes and to what?
A: Human activities (such as machinery sparks, cast-away cigarette butts, or arson).

The spread of wildfires varies based on what?
A: The flammable material present, its vertical arrangement and moisture content, and weather conditions.

Fuel arrangement and density is governed in part by what?
A: Topography, as land shape determines factors such as available sunlight and water for plant growth.

Crawling or surface fires are fueled by what?
A: Low-lying vegetation on the forest floor such as leaf and timber litter, debris, grass, and low-lying shrubbery.

This kind of fire often burns at a relatively lower temperature than what?
A: Crown fires (less than 400 °C (752 °F)).

Ladder fires consume material between low-level vegetation and tree canopies, such as what?
A: Small trees, downed logs, and vines.

Crown, canopy, or aerial fires burn suspended material at the canopy level, such as what?
A: Tall trees, vines, and mosses.

Stand-replacing fires lit by humans can spread into the Amazon rain forest, damaging what?
A: Ecosystems not particularly suited for heat or arid conditions.

A high moisture content usually prevents ignition and slows what?
A: Propagation, because higher temperatures are required to evaporate any water within the material and heat the material to its fire point.

Dense forests usually provide more shade, resulting in what?
A: Lower ambient temperatures and greater humidity, and are therefore less susceptible to wildfires.

Why are less dense materials such as grasses and leaves easier to ignite?
A: Because they contain less water than denser material such as branches and trunks.

Plants continuously lose water by evapotranspiration, but water loss is usually balanced by water absorbed from what?
A: The soil, humidity, or rain.

When this balance is not maintained, plants dry out and are therefore more what?
A: Flammable, often a consequence of droughts.

What is a wildfire front?
A: It’s the portion sustaining continuous flaming combustion, where unburned material meets active flames, or the smoldering transition between unburned and burned material.

As the front approaches, the fire heats both the surrounding air and woody material through what?
A: Convection and thermal radiation.

First, wood is dried as water is vaporized at what temperature?
A: 100 °C (212 °F).

Even before the flames of a wildfire arrive at a particular location, heat transfer from the wildfire front warms the air to what temperature?
A: 800 °C (1,470 °F), which pre-heats and dries flammable materials, causing materials to ignite faster and allowing the fire to spread faster.

Wildfires have a rapid forward rate of spread (FROS) when burning through what?
A: Dense, uninterrupted fuels.

How fast can they move?
A: As fast as 10.8 kilometres per hour (6.7 mph) in forests and 22 kilometres per hour (14 mph) in grasslands.

Fires may spread by jumping or spotting as winds and vertical convection columns carry firebrands (hot wood embers) and other burning materials through the air over roads, rivers, and other barriers that may otherwise act as what?
A: Firebreaks.

In Australian bushfires, spot fires are known to occur how far away?
A: As far as 20 kilometers (12 mi) from the fire front.

The thermal heat from a wildfire can cause significant weathering of what?
A: Rocks and boulders, heat can rapidly expand a boulder and thermal shock can occur, which may cause an object's structure to fail.

When are lightning-sparked wildfires frequent occurrences?
A: During the dry summer season.

Years of precipitation followed by warm periods can encourage more widespread fires and longer what?
A: Fire seasons.

Since the mid-1980s, earlier snowmelt and associated warming has also been associated with an increase in what?
A: The length and severity of the wildfire season in the Western United States.

Global warming may increase the intensity and frequency of droughts in many areas, creating what?
A: More intense and frequent wildfires.

Burn rates of smoldering logs are up to five times greater during the day due to what?
A: Lower humidity, increased temperatures, and increased wind speeds.

Sunlight warms the ground during the day which creates air currents that do what?
A: Travel uphill.

At night the land cools, creating air currents that do what?
A: Travel downhill.

Wildfires are fanned by these winds and often follow the air currents where?
A: Over hills and through valleys.

Wildfire suppression operations in the United States revolve around a 24-hour fire day that begins at 10:00 a.m. due to the predictable what?
A: Increase in intensity resulting from the daytime warmth.

Wildfires are common in climates that are sufficiently moist to allow the growth of vegetation but feature what?
A: Extended dry, hot periods.