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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

Wildfires burn more than 7 million acres in the United States annually, according to the US Forest Service. Little is known about which subpopulations are more vulnerable to health risks from wildfire smoke, including those associated with fine particulate matter. We estimated…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects
Region(s): California
Keywords: air pollution, health, PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, respiratory health, vulnerability, wildfires

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

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

Pyroendemics are plants in which seedling germination and successful seedling recruitment are restricted to immediate postfire environments. In many fire-prone ecosystems species cue their germination to immediate postfire conditions. Here we address how species have evolved one…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Ecology, Fire Effects
Region(s): California, International
Keywords: fire-prone, fire-prone ecosystem, germination, pyroendemic plants, Mediterranean climate, South Africa, combustion products

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

 In this study we investigate the use of ΔPM2.5/ΔCO and ΔNOy/ΔCO normalized enhancement ratios (NERs) in identifying wildfire (WF) smoke events in urban areas. Nine urban ambient monitoring sites with adequate CO, PM2.5, and/or NOy measurements were selected for this study. We…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Models, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northwest, Rocky Mountain
Keywords: wildfires, NER - normalized enhancement ratio, air quality, PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, urban areas, CO - carbon monoxide, NO - nitrogen oxide, emission ratio

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

Background: The health impacts of wildfire smoke, including fine particles (PM2.5), are not well understood and may differ from those of PM2.5 from other sources due to differences in concentrations and chemical composition. Methods: First, for the entire Western US (561…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Safety
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, hospital admissions, health impacts, aerosol transport modeling, respiratory disease, wildfires, air pollution

Aerosols emitted by landscape fires affect many climatic processes. Here, we combined an aerosol–climate model and a coupled climate-carbon model to study the carbon cycle and climate effects caused by fire-emitted aerosols (FEA) forcing at the top of the atmosphere and at the…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: aerosols, forcing, carbon cycle, C - carbon

Smoke from fire can sharply reduce air quality by releasing particulate matter, one of the most dangerous types of air pollution for human health. A third of U.S. households have someone sensitive to smoke. Minimizing the amount and impact of smoke is a high priority for land…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Hazard and Risk, Models, Prescribed Fire, Restoration and Rehabilitation
Region(s): California, Northwest, Rocky Mountain
Keywords: air quality, risk reduction, air resource management, fire management, BlueSky Modeling Framework

Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) has been shown to form in biomass-burning emissions in laboratory and field studies. However, there is significant variability among studies in mass enhancement, which could be due to differences in fuels, fire conditions, dilution, and/or…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Fuels
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: organic aerosols, biomass burning, plumes, laboratory experiments

Quantifying biomass consumption and carbon release is critical to understanding the role of fires in the carbon cycle and air quality. We present a methodology to estimate the biomass consumed and the carbon released by the California Rim fire by integrating postfire airborne…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Effects, Fire Occurrence, Mapping
Region(s): California
Keywords: LiDAR - Light Detection and Ranging, biomass consumption, C - carbon, megafires, Landsat, scientific data integration, 2013 Rim Fire, carbon release

This study examines major wildfires in the western United States between 2005 and 2015 to determine which species exhibit the highest percent change in mass concentration on day of peak fire influence relative to preceding nonfire days. Forty-one fires were examined using the…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: aerosol, IMPROVE, biomass burning, chloride, dust, NAAPS - Navy Aerosol Analysis and Prediction System, organic aerosols

When it comes to unnecessary risk and exposure to heat, smoke, fatigue, and noise, could you be a “Bad Ass” or a “Dumb Ass”? Maybe it’s time you put a pinch of practical in your tactical pause. George Broyles, Fire and Fuels Project Leader for the U.S. Forest Service’s National…
Person:
Year: 2017
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: LLC - Lessons Learned Center, firefighter health, firefighter safety, smoke exposure, heat stress, heat-related illness, fatigue, noise, safety zone

In a pair of review papers, Potter (2012a, 2012b) summarized the significant fire weather research findings over about the past hundred years. Our scientific understanding of wildland fire-atmosphere interactions has evolved: from simple correlations supporting the notion that…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fuels, Models, Prescribed Fire, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: fire-atmosphere interaction, fire meteorology, NEXRAD doppler radar images, microclimate

Convection and downbursts are connected meteorological phenomena with the potential to affect fire behavior and thereby alter the evolution of a wildland fire. Meteorological phenomena related to convection and down-bursts are often discussed in the context of fire behavior and…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: convection, downburst, atmospheric dynamics, meteorological factors

Smoke can manifest itself as a towering plume rising against the clear blue sky-or as a vast swath of thick haze, with fingers that settle into valleys overnight. It comes in many forms and colors, from fluffy and white to thick and black. Smoke plumes can rise high into the…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Safety
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, International
Keywords: public health, air quality, smoke particulates, PM - particulate matter, Canada, British Columbia, smoke plumes, superfog

Emissions of aerosols and gases from fires have been shown to adversely affect US air quality at local to regional scales as well as downwind regions far away from the source. In addition, smoke from fires negatively affects humans, ecosystems, and climate. Recent observations…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: simulation, predictions, Community Earth System Model, area burned, air quality, O3 - ozone, PM2.5

In the last few decades, the number of people living in fire-prone ecosystems has increased, placing more people and private property at risk to future fire events. Substantial research has demonstrated consistent public support for the use of prescribed fires in fuel-reduction…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fuels, Models, Prescribed Fire, Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
Region(s): California, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Southern
Keywords: Shasta-Trinity National Forest, Kootenai National Forest, Fremont-Winema National Forest, Francis Marion National Forest, Sumter National Forest, public perceptions, wildfires, smoke management, air quality

Smouldering fires in peatland are different from the flames in wildland fires. Smouldering peat fire is slow, low-temperature and more persistent, releasing large amounts of smoke into the atmosphere. In this work, we experimentally and computationally investigate the vertical…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: smoldering fires, carbon emissions, fire spread, rate of spread, peatland