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Project ID: 07-2-1-60

Year: 2007

Date Started: 06/04/2007

Date Completed: 06/28/2010

Title: Wildfire Inputs to Regional Air Quality: Remote Spatial-Temporal Measures for Improved Inventory Assessments

Project Proposal Abstract: Accurate information on regional background particulate matter concentrations is essential to burn permitting and airshed management. Such information is essential to efforts to comply with National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The standard approach (applied by Malm: # 01-1-5-01 and others) to quantify regional wildfire emissions, while the most widely applied and easily understood, exhibits considerable uncertainly. Specifically, apart from area burned, its parameterization does not account for the high spatial-temporal variability in fuels and fire behavior, nor the associated effects on fuel combustion and emission characteristics. As field measures of these parameters are logistically impossible to collect at scales meaningful for rapid or regional assessments, it is essential to develop and refine remote sensing methods for this purpose. Recent research has shown that remote measures of the energy radiated by fire-affected pixels (Rx/wildfire) are directly related to smoke source strength (kg/MJ). We therefore propose to measure this radiative energy for each fire-affected pixel throughout the entire duration of large-scale candidate fires; and use the corresponding smoke source strength as inputs within regional transport models. Unlike the traditional approach, this method provides data on the rate of smoke emission when the fire is occurring, and so incorporating such measures into regional air quality models (e.g., the BlueSky Smoke Dispersion Forecast System and the AIRPACT-3 regional air quality forecast system) should enable improved real-time spatial-temporal emission assessments. We propose to: 1) Select several large wildfires and evaluate the spatial-temporal variability of the emission source strengths; 2) Compare the emissions using the traditional methodology and via prior regional assessments; 3) Demonstrate the sensitivity of current air quality models to these different emission methods; and 4) present findings/method to managers/researchers.

Principal Investigator: Alistair M. Smith

Agency/Organization: University of Idaho

Branch or Dept: Department of Forest Resources

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Co-Principal Investigator	Brian K. Lamb	Washington State University-Pullman	Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Federal Cooperator	Brian E. Potter	Forest Service	PNW-Seattle-Managing Natural Disturbances
Federal Fiscal Representative	Tamatha S. Verhunc	Forest Service	PNW-Pacific Northwest Research Station

Project Locations

Consortium

Great Basin

Southwest

Level	State	Agency	Unit
N/A

Project Deliverables

Final Report ("Results presented in JFSP Final Reports may not have been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as tentative until published in a peer-reviewed source.")

	ID	Type	Title
	8754	Refereed Publication	The Combustion of Sound and Rotten Coarse Woody Debris: A Review
	7854	Invited Paper/Presentation	Using MODIS FRP Values to Estimate Forest Fire PM 2.5 Emission
	8752	MS Thesis	Using In-Situ Observations by Wildland Fire Fighters to Assess Detection by MODIS (H. Heward)
	8250	Conference/Symposia/Workshop	Effective Communication for Smoke Management in a Changing Air Quality Environment
	7802	Conference/Symposia/Workshop	Effective Communication for Smoke Management in a Changing Air Quality Environment
	8751	Poster	Furthering Air Quality and Smoke Management Trainings
	8750	Poster	The Effect of Decomposition on Coarse Woody Debris Combustion: A Preliminary Investigation
	8749	Poster	Wildfire Inputs to Regional Air Quality Remote Spatial-Temporal Measures for Improved Inventory Assessments

Supporting Documents

There are no supporting documents available for this project.

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