Nonballistic transport of particles in a canopy-plume system

We investigated the transport of model firebrands in a canopy-plume system to explore which physical parameters influenced their landing positions. Broad landing distributions motivated a division of particle populations based on landing distance. Particles that travelled further spent more time in the plume and remained higher in the water column. We found that common assumptions in wildfire literature, such as ballistic transport of firebrands, did not capture the dynamics we observed. Stochastic simulations suggested that spatiotemporal coherence in the flow field is an important reason why this ballistic assumption fails.