Smoke produced by vegetation fires consists of a complex mixture of gaseous, liquid, and solid phases. Many particulates are generated during vegetation fires. Crutzen and Andreae (1990) have estimated that global emissions of pyrogenic smoke particles (50-150 Tg yr-l) may currently exceed global sulfate aerosol produced from fossil fuel burning. These pyrogenic particulates are largely composed of carbonaceous materials (Crutzen and Andreae 1990, Cachier et al.,1991). It is clear that particulate organic carbon is the dominant (~2/3) aerosol product of biomass fires (Andreae et al. 1988). Carbonaceous smoke particles are usually divided into organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC) aerosols (Mazurek et al. 1991, Ward et al. 1991). The OC aerosol fraction usually predominates in the smoke plumes resulting from vegetation fires, and consists of almost anything, ranging from organic acids and aldehydes to waxes and tars. Results from biomass fires in the Canadian boreal system indicate average ratios of OC/EC of about 16:1 (Mazurek et al. 1991), from Africa of about 10:1 (Cachier et al. 1991), and from Brazil about 12:1 (Ward et al. 1992). Vegetation fires also produce charcoal carbon (Seiler and Crutzen 1980). Both EC and charcoal carbon show a relative lack of reactivity (both chemically and biochemically), and thereby, strongly resist decomposition. Thus, estimates of vegetation burning over geological times often have been based on deposits of charcoal and elemental carbon in marine, lacustrine, and terrestrial sediments (Herring 1985, Clark 1988, Anders et al. 1991). There are fundamental differences between charcoal particles and elemental carbon particles. Charcoal is formed during vegetation fires by means of low-temperature (relative to EC) pyrolysis. Charcoal carbon is produced from charring larger woody fragments under reducing conditions. This tends to produce large particles that are irregular in shape. While charcoal carbon fragments can be found at almost any size, they are usually large (>100 µm). Elemental carbon is primarily produced during intense flaming combustion and the size distributions determined from vegetation fire smoke consist of a nucleation mode (<0.1 µm), an accumulation mode (0.1-2.0 µm), and a coarse mode (>2.0 µm). The largest number of smoke particles are found in the accumulation mode, centered around 0.3 µm, and they are typically spherical in shape. The large difference in the average particle sizes for EC and charcoal have profound implications regarding transport. The smaller EC particles would be expected to be much more broadly dispersed by atmospheric transport, since, once lofted by the fires, would have much longer atmospheric residence times. It is clear that the dispersion of small size smoke aerosols from large vegetation fires can be regional-to-global in scale. In contrast, the larger charcoal fragments would be expected to remain much closer to their source fires. The relationship of biomass burning emissions to the stratigraphie record is highly complex. It demands an understanding of emissions, transport, and deposition behavior, and global circulation/weather patterns at the time of the deposition.