Wildfire in a Narrow Gully: A Geometric Reduction Approach

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: De Gaspari, Lorenzo, Dipierro, Serena, Valdinoci, Enrico
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author De Gaspari, Lorenzo
Dipierro, Serena
Valdinoci, Enrico
author_facet De Gaspari, Lorenzo
Dipierro, Serena
Valdinoci, Enrico
contents We consider a bushfire model in a gully. The biological scenario under consideration involves flammable fuel (trees, leaves, etc.) concentrated within the gully, surrounded by rocky hillslopes containing little or no burnable material. The mathematical formulation of the problem is a nonlocal evolution equation of parabolic type. The nonlocality arises from an ignition mechanism that becomes active when the temperature reaches the ignition threshold and is modeled via a kernel interaction with limitrophe areas. The rocky hillsides of the gully impose insulating boundary conditions of Neumann type, while the entrance and exit of the gully are modeled by (not necessarily homogeneous) Dirichlet boundary data, corresponding to prescribed environmental temperatures on the gully's terminals. Given the geometry of the domain, in the asymptotic regime of a narrow gully the model undergoes a dimensional reduction and can be analyzed through a geometric equation posed along the (not necessarily straight) axis of the gully. The reduced equation is supplemented with inner and outer Dirichlet boundary conditions (with no Neumann condition remaining in the limit). The analysis relies on the use of Fermi coordinates to capture the potentially curvilinear geometry of the gully, as well as on parabolic estimates tailored to the specific equation in order to properly account for the ignition interactions. These estimates are delicate, as the domain degenerates and the boundary conditions vary in the limit. To overcome these difficulties, we develop a bespoke reflection technique that provides uniform bounds and enables the passage to the limit.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_12192
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Wildfire in a Narrow Gully: A Geometric Reduction Approach
De Gaspari, Lorenzo
Dipierro, Serena
Valdinoci, Enrico
Analysis of PDEs
35K10, 45H05, 53B21
We consider a bushfire model in a gully. The biological scenario under consideration involves flammable fuel (trees, leaves, etc.) concentrated within the gully, surrounded by rocky hillslopes containing little or no burnable material. The mathematical formulation of the problem is a nonlocal evolution equation of parabolic type. The nonlocality arises from an ignition mechanism that becomes active when the temperature reaches the ignition threshold and is modeled via a kernel interaction with limitrophe areas. The rocky hillsides of the gully impose insulating boundary conditions of Neumann type, while the entrance and exit of the gully are modeled by (not necessarily homogeneous) Dirichlet boundary data, corresponding to prescribed environmental temperatures on the gully's terminals. Given the geometry of the domain, in the asymptotic regime of a narrow gully the model undergoes a dimensional reduction and can be analyzed through a geometric equation posed along the (not necessarily straight) axis of the gully. The reduced equation is supplemented with inner and outer Dirichlet boundary conditions (with no Neumann condition remaining in the limit). The analysis relies on the use of Fermi coordinates to capture the potentially curvilinear geometry of the gully, as well as on parabolic estimates tailored to the specific equation in order to properly account for the ignition interactions. These estimates are delicate, as the domain degenerates and the boundary conditions vary in the limit. To overcome these difficulties, we develop a bespoke reflection technique that provides uniform bounds and enables the passage to the limit.
title Wildfire in a Narrow Gully: A Geometric Reduction Approach
topic Analysis of PDEs
35K10, 45H05, 53B21
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.12192