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The forest fire models allow the user to see the effect of burn probability on the number of trees that perish in a forest fire. In the agent-based model, the users can watch individual trees burn as the location of the lightning strike and the burn probability are manipulated. They should notice that even when the conditions are identical, the forest fire may behave differently from one run to the next. This variability, which is caused by the use of random numbers in the simulation, demonstrates that real-world outcomes are not perfectly predictable. In the systems-based version, the forest is looked at as a group of trees that will catch on fire at a rate determined by the burn probability and the number of days that trees remain smoldering. In the systems model, identical conditions generate identical outcomes, indicating that no uncertainty has been built into the model.
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