Discuss Findings

best spanning suppression is +0.01684 +/- 0.00015 with best parameters centered near lightning 0.00159, ridge alignment 0.612, wind strength 1.630, and cooldown 16.81; the mid-alignment mean gain is +0.00368 +/- 0.00006 with support fraction 0.77458 +/- 0.00543, so most but not all ridge-channel conditions show suppression rather than a universal effect.

Ridge-locked burn scars are acting as partial firebreak memories, but the benefit is modest and geometry dependent. The fact that support is high at intermediate alignment while the best effect sits at stronger wind and longer cooldown suggests that channels matter only when recovery lags are long enough for scars to persist into subsequent wind-driven fronts. This is scientifically interesting because it points to a mesoscale guidance mechanism: topographic alignment can redirect recurrent fire into previously depleted corridors. The effect is not large enough to count as a broad phase change, but it is strong enough to motivate more targeted sweeps around the ridge-memory regime.