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Cells have several states, and you might want to designate the different sates with different numbers. You'll need at least a state for unoccupied sites -- that is, places where there is no vegetation. Define two or three species of vegetation, one that burns easily, catches fire easily, and regenerates quickly. Call these the torches. Another species does not catch fire easily and doesn't regenerate quickly. Call these the damps. Maybe define an intermediate species, or some species with a combination of traits from torches and damps. Finally, define a burning state, maybe a different burning state for each species.
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In every time step, have each vegetated cell look for near neighbors that are burning. If there are any (and consider using the any primitive), have the cell become a burning cell with some probability defined by the user and dependent on the species.
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Use my mouse code (see CellularAutomatonPercolationModel for an example) to let the use start a fire anywhere using a mouse click.
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Create sliders to let the user change initial densities of the different species, or probabilities that some occupied patch is occupied with a particular species.
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Define sliders to allow the user to change the burn probabilities of the different species. Same with the different species' regeneration probabilities.
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Define a slider to allow the user to set the wind direction. Figure out some way to have fire more likely to spread in the direction of the wind direction.
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Try to get the initial forest to be clumpy, with damps clustering in the vicinity of damps and torches not clustered much at all, or torches clustered and damps not. Does this change the behavior of fire, or the effect of fire on species composition?
Under what conditions do you get a steady state between burning and nonburning? Under what circumstances do torches or damps dominate the forest?
