my Google-fu is weak

[dragonladyflame]

I am trying to write a dragon of fire that incorporates aspects of root fires. However, I know very little about root fires (the forest phenomenon). And every time I try to search teh Intarweb, everything I come up with has to do with some kind of music phenomenon named after root fires, or the album "Root Fire" by some band

Comments

[gm_928]

Wildland firefighters generally use the terms "ground fire," or "sub-surface fire." In some cases, the term "surface fire" is also used, and can be synonymous with "sub-surface fire." In other references, "sub-surface" and "surface" fires are defined separately, with "surface fire" occurring in the level of vegetation just above the ground. If you search for these terms instead of the more colloquial "root fire," you'll find more information.

For a cool picture, look here:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/EDISImagePage?imageID=279505806&dlNumber=FR138&tag=FIGURE%205&credits=Dale%20Wade,%20USDA%20Forest%20Service,%20www.forestryimages.org

The brochure that the picture comes from can be found here:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FR/FR13800.pdf

A study of some root fire:
http://www.fire.uni-freiburg.de/GlobalNetworks/SouthEastAsia/Malaysia_damage%20assessment%201998.doc

This was the best set of definitions I could find:

Fire Types: Ground, Surface, and Crown
There are three main types of fire: Ground, surface, and crown, although it is important to realize that on large fires all three kinds of fires may be evident.
Ground fires burn below the ground surface. They are very slow-moving fires that smolder underground in buried fuels, and in the case of peat bogs, can be extremely difficult to fully extinguish. The significance of ground fires is that these can be "sleeper fires" that may escape detection for several days following their ignition until they become an unexpected wildfire.
Surface fire is the most common type of fire. It burns dead fuels and live vegetation located above the ground, including dead needles and limbs, grasses, forbs, brush, tree saplings and poles, but does not include burning the overstory tree canopy layer. Surface fires can range from slow- to fast-moving and from low to high intensity. Firefighting efforts are successful when they can contain or "corral" surface fires within firelines, and then control all visible smokes within a few hundred feet within the perimeter.
Crown fire is the most popular image shown on television newscasts, yet it is the rarest type of fire. Crown fires are normally fast-spreading and high-intensity fires. They can begin by single-tree "torching" that spreads to adjacent stands. Crown fires can be dependent upon surface flames, or in the most extreme type of fire event, can move independent of flames on the ground. In the latter case, fire moves extremely rapidly through the canopy layer ahead of fires burning along the surface. Crown fires are the most severe kind of fire since they kill most or all of the trees they burn. They are also the fires that are near impossible to humanly contain and control until the fire drops back down to the ground and more favorable conditions permit containment. Crown fires are extremely dangerous to firefighters because they can ignite spotfires ahead of the main flame front, thereby entrapping firefighters between two fires.

The definitions above came from this document:
http://www.fusee.org/ffighters/docs/Reporters_guide.pdf

[dragonladyflame]

Awesome. I have learned important Google lessons today.

1) The - operator works. I don't know why I didn't consider that. It seems pretty obvious in retrospect.
2) Even if terms like "surface fire" don't sound like what you're looking for, you should make sure.
3) Ask gm_928 all your questions.