THE AUTHOR 



RESEARCH SUMMARY 



HAL E. ANDERSON has been team leader of the basic 

 research section of the Fire Fundamentals research work 

 unit since 1979. He joined the staff at Intermountain 

 Station's Intermountain Fire Sciences Laboratory (formerly 

 known as Northern Forest Fire Laboratory) in Missoula, MT, 

 in 1961 and served as project leader of the fire physics proj- 

 ect from 1 966 to 1 979. He previously worked with General 

 Electric Company from 1952 to 1961 on thermal and nu- 

 clear instrumentation. He received his B.S. degree in phys- 

 ics from Central Washington University in 1952. Anderson 

 retired in April 1990. 



Forest foliar litters that make up the fine fuels involved in 

 spreading wildfires may vary in equilibrium moisture content, 

 EMC, by 7 percent or more. This research reports the differ- 

 ences in EMC by species, the changes in EMC due to rela- 

 tive humidity and fuel temperature, and the predictions of 

 EMC by applying a form of the Gibbs free energy equation. 

 Resurts show that EMC's of only a few litter types are similar 

 to the EMC of wood and that all litter types exhibited lower 

 EMC's than wood at high temperatures and humidities. Test 

 conditions ranged from 278 "K (40 °F) to 322 °K (120 °F) 

 and from 1 to 90 percent RH. 



Intermountain Research Station 

 324 25th Street 

 Ogden, UT 84401 



