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Multiple trace-gas instruments were deployed during the fourth Fire Lab at Missoula Experiment (FLAME-4), including the first application of proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometry (PTR-TOFMS) and comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography-time-of-flight…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: biomass burning, FTIR - Fourier transform infrared absorption spectroscopy , laboratory experiments

This document presents the study plan for the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE). FASMEE is a large-scale interagency effort to (1) identify the critical measurements necessary to improve operational wildland fire and smoke prediction systems, (2) collect…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fuels, Mapping, Models, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: JFSP - Joint Fire Science Program, FASMEE - Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment, plume dynamics, air quality, fire energy

Fire has a role in ecosystem services; naturally produced wildfires are important for the sustainability of many terrestrial biomes and fire is one of nature's primary carbon-cycling mechanisms. Under a warming climate, it is likely that fire frequency and severity will increase…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Administration, Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Regulations and Legislation
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: climate change, biomass burning, policy, air quality

This webinar presented by Wayne Cascio June 21, 2017 highlighted updates to the Wildfire Smoke Guide, as well as the Smoke Sense app, which is a mobile application that gets air quality information to people impacted by wildfire smoke, and helps those affected learn ways to…
Person: Cascio
Year: 2017
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Communications, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: public health, wildfires, air quality, PM - particulate matter, air pollution, health effects, cardiovascular disease, respiratory effects

Recent growth in the frequency and severity of US wildfires has led to more wildfire smoke and increased public exposure to harmful air pollutants. Populations exposed to wildfire smoke experience a variety of negative health impacts, imposing economic costs on society. However…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Topic(s): Economics, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Hazard and Risk, Safety, Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air quality, wildfires, health factors, health costs, benefit transfer, BenMAP Community Edition, California wildfires, southern California, forecasting system, economic cost, smoke exposure, verification, mortality, cities

Wildland fire fighting is a high-risk occupation requiring considerable physical and psychological demands. Multiple agencies publish fatality summaries for wildland firefighters; however, the reported number and types vary. At least five different surveillance systems capture…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Hazard and Risk, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: firefighting personnel, wildfires, fire hazard reduction, Wildland Fire Fatality, Wildland Firefighter, Particulate Air-Pollution, Heart-Disease, climate change, short-term, fatalities, exposure

Several U.S. state and tribal agencies and other countries have implemented a methodology developed in the arid intermountain western U.S. where short-term (1- to 3-hr) particulate matter (PM) with aerodynamic diameters less than 2.5 µm (PM2.5) concentrations are estimated from…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: smoke effects, wildfires, air quality, health factors, fire management, smoke management

Among the key issues in smoke management is predicting the magnitude and location of smoke effects. These vary in severity from hazardous (acute health conditions and drastic visibility impairment to transportation) to nuisance (regional haze), and occur across a range of scales…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: smoke effects, wildfires, air quality, particulates, pollution, Canada, Mississippi, Tennessee, fire management, smoke management, air-quality impacts, forest fires, atmospheric transport, lower stratosphere, stochastic models, plume rise, simulation, system, dispersion, smoke modeling, smoke transport, smoke prediction systems

Forest fire is an serious hazard in many places around the world. For such threats, video-based smoke detection would be particularly important for early warning because smoke arises in any forest fire and can be seen from a long distance. This paper presents a novel and robust…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Occurrence
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: smoke detection, deep belief networks, color spaces, motion detection, fire occurrence patterns, video monitoring

Objective: A repeated measures study was used to assess the effect of work tasks on select proinflammatory biomarkers in firefighters working at prescribed burns. Methods: Ten firefighters and two volunteers were monitored for particulate matter and carbon monoxide on workdays,…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Prescribed Fire, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: firefighter exposure, smoke exposure, interleukin-8

Identifying communities vulnerable to adverse health effects from exposure to wildfire smoke may help prepare responses, increase the resilience to smoke and improve public health outcomes during smoke days. We developed a Community Health-Vulnerability Index (CHVI) based on…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: wildfire, air quality, PM - particulate matter, PM2.5, public health, CHVI - Community Health-Vulnerability Index

From the Spring 2017 AFSC Remote Sensing Workshop: Opportunities to Apply Remote Sensing in Boreal/Arctic Wildfire Management and Science.
Person: French
Year: 2017
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fuels, Models, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: fuel characteristics, remote sensing, fuel loading, FCCS - Fuel Characteristic Classification System, LiDAR - Light Detection and Ranging, air quality, emissions modeling

A diversity of partners and interests, federal to private, came together to identify current challenges and research in the wildland fire and air quality impacts realm. Meeting management needs and the opportunity to learn from one another’s expert perspectives were primary…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Communications, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Fuels, Models, Outreach, Planning, Prescribed Fire, Social Science, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air quality impacts, smoke management, emissions inventory, fuel characterization

Wildfires emit O3 precursors but there are large variations in emissions, plume heights, and photochemical processing. These factors make it challenging to model O3 production from wildfires using Eulerian models. Here we describe a statistical approach to characterize the…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: O3 - ozone, PM - particulate matter, GAM - generalized additive model

Smoke from wildfires has adverse biological and social consequences, and various lines of evidence suggest that smoke concentrations in the future may be more intense, more frequent, more widespread, or all of the above. In this document, we review the essential ingredients of a…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: climate change, smoke transport, smoke prediction systems, wildfire regime, feedbacks, coupled models

Satellite based fire radiant energy retrievals are widely applied to assess biomass consumed and emissions at regional to global scales. A known potential source of uncertainty in biomass burning estimates arises from fuel moisture but this impact has not been quantified in…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fuels, Mapping, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: fuel moisture, remote sensing, biomass burning, FRE - Fire Radiative Energy, FRP - Fire Radiative Power

The Fire Modeling Institute (FMI) brings the best available fire and fuel science and technology developed throughout the research community to bear in fire-related management issues. Although located within the Fire, Fuel, and Smoke Science Program of the U.S. Forest Service…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fuels, Mapping, Models, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: MPB - mountain pine beetle, smoke science research, Fire Modeling Institute

The term 'backfire' refers to a commonly used method for prescribed burning in which the igniter sets a line of fire that slowly backs into the wind. This technique should not be confused with the colloquial use of the term 'backfire' for 'suppression fire,' which refers to any…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Prescribed Fire, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: fire intensity, backfire

While North American ecosystems vary widely in their ecology and natural historical fire regimes, they are unified in benefitting from prescribed fire when judiciously applied with the goal of maintaining and restoring native ecosystem composition, structure, and function. On a…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: Canada, fire benefits, ecosystem health, historic fire regimes

Fuel consumption specifies the amount of vegetative biomass consumed during wildland fire. It is a two-stage process of pyrolysis and combustion that occurs simultaneously and at different rates depending on the characteristics and condition of the fuel, weather, topography, and…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fuels, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: carbon emissions, FERA - Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team, fuel consumption, wildland fire emissions

As forest carbon offset projects become more popular, professional foresters are providing their expertise to support them. But when several members of the Society of American Foresters questioned the science and assumptions used to design the projects, the organization decided…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: forest management, carbon offsets, greenhouse gas mitigation

First order fire effects are those that concern the direct or indirect or immediate consequences of fire. First order fire effects form an important basis for prediction secondary effects such as tree regeneration plant succession, and changes in site productivity, but these…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Fuels, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: FOFEM - First Order Fire Effects Model, duff, moisture regimes, soil heating, fuel consumption, tree mortality

The worldwide 'wildfire' problem is headlined by the loss of human lives and homes, but it applies generally to any adverse effects of unplanned fires, as events or regimes, on a wide range of environmental, social, and economic assets. The problem is complex and contingent,…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Prescribed Fire, Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: biodiversity, fire management, fire regime, adaptation, policy, fatalities, disaster, assets

Models of fire behavior and effects do not always make accurate predictions, and there is not enough systematically gathered data to validate them. To help advance fire behavior and fire effects model development, the Joint Fire Science Program is helping fund the RxCADRE, which…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Effects, Fuels, Models, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: aircraft, fire data, RxCADRE

[from the text] Land managers and officials need to understand the diverse public opinions toward smoke from wildland fires; however, a very limited amount of research has been conducted on this topic. Hence, land and fire managers are largely uncertain about society's…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Safety, Social Science
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: escaped fire, public perception, trust, public health, public attitudes