Understanding the Imminence of Forest Fire Using Laser Doppler Vibrometer

This study is motivated to find out whether the possibility of forest fire could be predicted based on identifying the reduction of moisture content in the plant. Toward this direction, we explored, specifically, the effect of decreasing water content in the plants on its mechanical properties by a simple yet novel method. This method applies a Laser Doppler Vibrometer to study the change of dynamic response of plants. It was assumed that the change of moisture content would result in the change of mechanical parameters like stiffness and damping of the plant body, which would, in turn, cause changes in natural Frequency of the plant. To carry out this experiment, two plants named Ficus Elastica and Auracaria Cookii were deprived of water for five consecutive days, and their change in resonant frequencies to the external excitation was observed. The important inference from this study concludes that rubber tree (Ficus Elastica) is more robust against water depletion by displaying negligible change in resonant frequency as compared to the Christmas tree (Auracaria Cookii).