Finite-size effects in the self-organized critical forest-fire model

Klaus Schenk, Barbara Drossel, Siegfried Clar, Franz Schwabl

Published 1999-04-24, updated 2001-05-05Version 2

We study finite-size effects in the self-organized critical forest-fire model by numerically evaluating the tree density and the fire size distribution. The results show that this model does not display the finite-size scaling seen in conventional critical systems. Rather, the system is composed of relatively homogeneous patches of different tree densities, leading to two qualitatively different types of fires: those that span an entire patch and those that don't. As the system size becomes smaller, the system contains less patches, and finally becomes homogeneous, with large density fluctuations in time.