Sponsors

Neda Yaghoobian, Florida State University, United States of America

 

Short Biography: Neda Yaghoobian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and an Associate of the Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science at Florida State University. Prior to joining FSU, she held postdoctoral and research engineering positions in Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and a postdoctoral fellow position in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland College Park. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of California, San Diego, during which she was also a visiting Research Assistant in the Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources at the University of California, Davis. She is a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER awardee, and her research interests include computational thermo-fluid dynamics, wildland and wildland-urban interface fires, environmental turbulence, land-atmosphere interactions, boundary-layer meteorology, urban microclimatology, and Earth’s energy system.

Short Summary: Canopy-wind interaction plays a central role in shaping near-surface fire behavior in vegetated environments. The presence of a plant canopy fundamentally alters the atmospheric flow by introducing strong drag, generating sharp velocity gradients at the canopy top, and producing coherent turbulent structures such as sweeps and ejections. These processes enhance mixing and intermittency, leading to highly heterogeneous distributions of momentum, heat, and scalars near the surface. As a result, canopy-induced turbulence strongly influences flame structure, fire spread rates, and the local transport of heat and embers. We will briefly talk about the physical mechanisms governing canopy-wind interaction and their implications for near-surface transport processes by reviewing canopy flow structure, turbulence generation and modulation, and the role of atmospheric dynamics in controlling flow regimes within and above canopies.