Description

Wildland fuels have been accumulating in the United States during at least the past half-century due to wildland fire management practices and policies. The additional fuels contribute to intense fire behavior, increase the costs of wildland fire control, and contribute to the degradation of local and regional air quality. The management of prescribed and wildland fire on Federal, State, and private lands pose critical challenges for the characterization of preburn fire fuels and postburn carbon consumption assessments, predicting smoke trajectories and concentrations, and modeling air quality emissions. Prescribed and wildland fires are both important sources of airborne fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone (O3) precursors such as nonmethane volatile (VOCs) and semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs), nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and methane (CH4). We quantified pre- and postburn belowground and aboveground biomass to determine fuel consumption for fine and coarse woody material, shrub, herbs, litter, and duff, and assessed fire effects on plant communities. The BlueSky smoke prediction modeling framework, and the BlueSky Rapid Access Information System (BlueSkyRAINS) were implemented to model smoke trajectory and PM2.5 concentrations at ground level in the downwind smoke plume. PM10 and 2.5 and photochemically and radiatively important trace gases during the flaming and smoldering stages of prescribed burns were characterized and fire emission modeled to determine emission factors for chemical species.