Fig. 3

Relationships among maximum paint tag temperature, fuel consumption, and vegetation cover for Moquah Barrens, Wisconsin, USA, study sites, burned in May 2016. Temperature (temp) estimated by paint tags installed at the soil surface explained 43% of variation in calibrated fuel consumption (a), and paint tags installed at the soil surface reached higher temperatures than those elevated to 25 cm aboveground (b). Elevated paint tag temperatures also varied with vegetation cover: paint tags at cut brush sites recorded higher temperatures than all other cover types, and grasslands had lower temperatures than deciduous forest (c). Colors correspond to vegetation cover in map (Fig. 1), and letters indicate statistically different groups identified by pairwise comparisons (Tukey’s). Consumption estimates are derived from a thick thermocouple probe co-located with paint tags as described in Additional file 1: S1