Goals and objectives outlined in the Clean Air Act of 1977 are in conflict with land management practices that utilize control or prescribed burns to maintain a healthy ecosystem. Specifically, smoke emissions from burn areas can significantly and adversely affect the visual air quality in scenic Class I areas such as the Grand Canyon National Park. As a consequence, there is a need to develop appropriate modeling and monitoring tools capable of predicting and measuring visibility impacts associated with fire emissions. While current modeling efforts have made reasonable progress in predicting local transport of smoke emissions, little work has gone into predicting visual effects of emissions, nor has much effort been expended in trying to predict transport or visual effects of smoke transported over long distances. There are also significant shortcomings associated with the ability to attribute the amount of visibility reduction associated with smoke. Visual impacts of smoke can be quantified through monitoring techniques. However, little effort has gone into techniques that will allow the FLM to determine how much of a given visibility reduction can be associated with smoke. One potentially useful technique, utilizing excess potassium for determining the effect of uniformly dispersed smoke has been put forth in this paper. However, much work remains to validate this approach and to further refine the proposed methodology.