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Wildfire is one of the most significant dangers and the most serious natural catastrophe, endangering forest resources, animal life, and the human economy. Recent years have witnessed a rise in wildfire incidents. The two main factors are persistent human interference with the…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: wildfire detection, forest fire, UAV - unmanned aerial vehicles, drone images, YOLOv5, deep learning, CNN - convolution neural network, smoke detection

Satellite remote sensing of aerosol optical depth (AOD) is essential for detection, characterization, and forecasting of wildfire smoke. In this work, we evaluate the AOD (550 nm) retrievals during the extreme wildfire events over the western U.S. in September 2020. Three…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California
Keywords: AOD - aerosol optical depth, MODIS - Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, VIIRS - Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, retrieval, wildfire, MAIAC - Multi‐angle Implementation of Atmospheric Correction, AERONET - Aerosol Robotic Network

PurpleAir particulate matter (PM) sensors are increasingly used in the United States and other countries for real-time air quality information, particularly during wildfire smoke episodes. Uncorrected PurpleAir data can be biased and may exhibit a nonlinear response at extreme…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air sensors, PurpleAir, PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, AQI - Air Quality Index, error correction, evaluation, wildfire

Heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs) are carcinogenic and mutagenic compounds formed by the cooking of meat and combustion of biomass. There are relatively few data on HAAs in atmospheric particulate matter (PM). We developed an analytical method using high performance liquid…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California
Keywords: PM - particulate matter, atmospheric particulate matter, heterocyclic aromatic amines, wildfire, HPLC-MS/MS - high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a class of compounds containing multiple aromatic rings formed during incomplete combustion. Since many of them are known mutagens and carcinogens, PAHs found in the particulate matter (PM) from the wildfire smoke may pose significant…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California
Keywords: wildfire, PAH - polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PM - particulate matter, DART-MS - direct analysis in real-time mass spectrometry, PM2.5, PM10, biomass burning, smoke exposure

To collect partner and employee input on the Wildfire Crisis Strategy 10-year Implementation Plan, the Forest Service and National Forest Foundation hosted a series of roundtable discussions in the winter and spring of 2022. Individual roundtables were focused on each of the…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Aquatic, Climate, Economics, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, Fire Effects, Fire History, Fire Occurrence, Fire Prevention, Fuels, Hazard and Risk, Mapping, Models, Monitoring and Inventory, Outreach, Planning, Prescribed Fire, Regulations and Legislation, Restoration and Rehabilitation, Safety, Social Science, Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: climate change, fire-adapted communities, fireshed, forest health, fuel treatment, ignition, land management, National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy (Cohesive Strategy), resilience, wildfires, Wildfire Crisis Strategy, trusted communicators, shared stewardship, equity, ITEK - Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Wildfire emissions are a key contributor of carbonaceous aerosols and trace gases to the atmosphere. Induced by buoyant lifting, smoke plumes can be injected into the free troposphere and lower stratosphere, which by consequence significantly affects the magnitude and distance…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Aviation, Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Models, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: biomass burning, inverse modeling, airborne lidar, LiDAR - Light Detection and Ranging, plume rise, WRF-Chem

Major wildfires and heatwaves have begun to increase in frequency throughout much of the United States, particularly in western states such as California, causing increased risk to public health. Air pollution is exacerbated by both wildfires and warmer temperatures, thus adding…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Monitoring and Inventory, Safety, Social Science
Region(s): California
Keywords: climate change, PM - particulate matter, PM2.5, heatwaves, air pollution, PurpleAir, compound risk, public health, environmental justice

Deep-learning (DL)-based object detection algorithms can greatly benefit the community at large in fighting fires, advancing climate intelligence, and reducing health complications caused by hazardous smoke particles. Existing DL-based techniques, which are mostly based on…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: wildfire, incipient stage, smoke density, detection, deep learning, computer vision, encoder–decoder Transformer, direct set prediction, attention mechanism, benchmarks, Nemo - Nevada Smoke detection benchmark

Wildfire severity is a key indicator of both direct ecosystem impacts and indirect emissions impacts that affect air quality, climate, and public health far beyond the spatial footprint of the flames. Comprehensive, accurate inventories of severity and emissions are essential…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, Fire Effects, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California
Keywords: burn severity, emissions inventory, fire progression maps, GEE - Google Earth Engine, WBSE - Wildfire Burn Severity and Emissions Inventory, dNBR - differenced Normalized Burn Ratio, CBI - composite burn index

Wildfire activity in the western United States during August to October 2020 was exceptional in terms of the fire severity and area burned. Extremely dry biomass fuels from near historic multi-year drought conditions were further exacerbated with very hot and dry conditions in…
Person:
Year: 2023
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Occurrence, Mapping, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California, Eastern, Northwest, Southern
Keywords: aerosol, remote sensing, AOD - aerosol optical depth, AERONET - Aerosol Robotic Network, PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, fine mode particulate mass, brown carbon, carbon absorbtion, extreme wildfires

Smoke plumes emitted from wildland-urban interface (WUI) wildfires contain toxic chemical substances that are harmful to human health, mainly due to the burning of synthetic components. Accurate measurement of these air toxics is necessary for understanding their impacts on…
Person:
Year: 2023
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Monitoring and Inventory, Safety, Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
Region(s): California
Keywords: UAV - unmanned aerial vehicles, wildfire, smoke plumes, air quality monitoring, low-cost sensor, VOC - volatile organic compounds

The behaviour of wildland fires and the dispersion of smoke from those fires can be strongly influenced by atmospheric turbulent flow. The science to support that assertion has developed and evolved over the past 100+ years, with contributions from laboratory and field…
Person:
Year: 2023
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: atmospheric turbulence, measurements, plumes, smoke dispersion, synthesis, vortices, wildland fires, wildfires

Space-borne observations are used to characterize the fate of formaldehyde and glyoxal in wildfire plumes. Their distribution measured by the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument reveals striking differences between the two compounds near intense fires. In typical situations, the…
Person:
Year: 2023
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: glyoxal, atmosphere, wildfires, pyrocumulonimbus, formaldehyde, satellite measurements

The SCIENCEx webinar series brings together scientists and land management experts from across U.S. Forest Service research stations and beyond to explore the latest science and best practices for addressing large natural resource challenges across the country. These webinars…
Person:
Year: 2023
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Aquatic, Climate, Economics, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, Fire Effects, Fire History, Fire Occurrence, Fire Prevention, Fuels, Hazard and Risk, Mapping, Models, Monitoring and Inventory, Outreach, Planning, Prescribed Fire, Restoration and Rehabilitation, Social Science, Weather, Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords:

Wildfire frequency has increased in the Western US over recent decades, driven by climate change and a legacy of forest management practices. Consequently, human structures, health, and life are increasingly at risk due to wildfires. Furthermore, wildfire smoke presents a…
Person:
Year: 2023
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Models, Monitoring and Inventory, Weather
Region(s): California
Keywords: wildfire, air quality, fire arrival, biomass burning, SFIRE, FINN - Fire Inventory of NCAR, wildfire spread

An algorithm for retrieving nighttime aerosol optical depth (AOD) from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Day-Night Band (DNB) observations of reflected moonlight is presented for rural areas during the western U.S. fire seasons. The algorithm uses the UNified…
Person:
Year: 2021
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: AOD - aerosol optical depth, retrieval, algorithms, VIIRS - Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, DNB - day-night band, moonlight observation, smoke transport, diurnal cycle, rural, air quality

The NOAA/NASA FIREX-AQ (Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality) experiment was a multi-agency, inter-disciplinary research effort to: (1) obtain detailed measurements of trace gas and aerosol emissions from wildfires and prescribed fires using aircraft…
Person:
Year: 2023
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Models, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: FIREX‐AQ - Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality, air quality, remote sensing

Since 1998, the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) has provided funding and science delivery for scientific studies associated with managing wildland fire, fuels, and fire-impacted ecosystems to respond to emerging needs of managers, practitioners, and policymakers from local to…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Administration, Aquatic, Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, Fire Effects, Fire History, Fuels, Hazard and Risk, Models, Monitoring and Inventory, Outreach, Planning, Prescribed Fire, Restoration and Rehabilitation, Safety, Social Science, Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: JFSP - Joint Fire Science Program

Brown carbon (BrC) associated with aerosol particles in western United States wildfires was measured between July and August 2019 aboard the NASA DC-8 research aircraft during the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) study. Two BrC…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: wildfires, air quality, brown carbon, PAS - Photoacoustic Aerosol Absorption Spectrometer, aerosol, FIREX‐AQ - Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality

Abstract. Light absorbing organic carbon, or brown carbon (BrC), can be a significant contributor to the visible light absorption budget. However, the sources of BrC and the contributions of BrC to light absorption are not well understood. Biomass burning is thought to be a…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: C - carbon, brown carbon, organic carbon, WE-CAN - Western Wildfire Experiment for Cloud Chemistry, Aerosol Absorption, and Nitrogen, carbon absorbtion, wildfires, PILS - Particle-into-Liquid Sampler, PAS - Photoacoustic Aerosol Absorption Spectrometer

We analyzed NO2 and O3 data from 32 U.S. non-attainment areas (NAAs) for 1995–2020. Since 1995, all regions have shown steady reductions in NO2 and the weekend-weekday pattern indicates that the O3 production regime in most NAAs has transitioned to a NOx-limited regime, while a…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California, Eastern, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest
Keywords: O3 - ozone, NO - nitrogen oxide, NOx, wildfires, COVID-19, air quality, non-attainment area

This seminar is part of the USFS Missoula Fire Lab Seminar Series. Wildfires in the western US have been particularly impactful in recent years not only in terms of loss of life and property but widespread smoke affecting millions of people. Several new satellites have launched…
Person: O'Neill
Year: 2021
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Effects, Mapping, Models, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California
Keywords: air quality, remote sensing, GOES - Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, VIIRS - Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, health impact analysis, Wine Country fires, Camp Fire, PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, CMAQ - Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling System, AQI - Air Quality Index, wildfires, mortality, GoFAST - GOES Fire and Smoke Tool

The severity of wildfires is increasing globally. In this study, we used data from the Global Change Observation Mission-Climate/Second-generation Global Imager (GCOM-C/SGLI) to characterize the biomass burning aerosols that are generated by large-scale wildfires. We used data…
Person:
Year: 2022
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Models, Monitoring and Inventory, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: SCALE - Scalable Computing for Advanced Library and Environment, GCOM - Global Change Observation Mission-Climate, SGLI - Second-generation Global Imager, AERONET - Aerosol Robotic Network, radiative transfer models, polarizations

This seminar is part of the USFS Missoula Fire Lab Seminar Series. Snowpacks act like high mountain reservoirs, but are vulnerable to climate change, while the vast majority of forest fires occur in the seasonal snow zone. Forest fires further exacerbate the influence of warming…
Person: Gleason
Year: 2022
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Aquatic, Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: climate change, snowpack, snowmelt, snow-water storage, fire severity, wildfires, snow hydrology, snow albedo, black carbon, organic debris, snow water equivalent