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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 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

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

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

Feedbacks between climate warming, land surface aridity, and wildfire-derived aerosols represent a large source of uncertainty in future climate predictions. Here, long-term observations of aerosol optical depth, surface level aerosol loading, fire-area burned, and hydrologic…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects
Region(s): Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: aerosol loading, aridity, climate warming, area burned

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

The Missoula Fire Lab Emission Inventory (MFLEI) is a retrospective, daily wildfire emission inventory for the contiguous United States with a spatial resolution of 250 meters (m). MFLEI was produced using multiple datasets of fire activity and burned area, a newly developed…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Data
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Fuels, Mapping
Region(s): California, Eastern, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest
Keywords: C - carbon, biomass burning, smoke dispersion, fire activity, burned area

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

The volatile nature of biomass burning organics may complicate the evolution of organics in laboratory smog-chamber experiments and in ambient plumes. We simulate the evolution of organic mass (including gas and particles) in the chamber experiments using the TwO-Moment Aerosol…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Data
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: aerosol formation, biomass burning, laboratory experiments, plume

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

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

FireWork is an on-line, one-way coupled meteorology–chemistry model based on near-real-time wildfire emissions. It was developed by Environment and Climate Change Canada to deliver operational real-time forecasts of biomass-burning pollutants, in particular fine particulate…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International
Keywords: PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, air quality, Canada, air quality model, wildfire, pollution, FireWork

We utilize the NOAA Hazard Mapping System smoke product for the period of 2005 to 2016 to develop climatology of smoke occurrence over the Continental United States (CONUS) region and to study the impact of wildland fires on particulate matter air quality at the surface. Our…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Mapping
Region(s): California, Eastern, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest
Keywords: biomass burning, air quality, PM - particulate matter, wildfires, NOAA Hazard Mapping System

Understanding the effect of wildfire smoke exposure on human health represents a unique interdisciplinary challenge to the scientific community. Population health studies indicate that wildfire smoke is a risk to human health and increases the healthcare burden of smoke-impacted…
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: wildfires, particulates, air quality, exposure, human health, inhalation irritants, toxicology, literature review

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: FRAMES
Topic(s): Economics, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: public health, benefit transfer, protocol, fire frequency, air pollution

Although representing only a small mass fraction of the emissions from biomass burning, the emitted particle-phase organic species (organic aerosol, OA) exert importance influences on visibility, climate, and human health. Wildland fire, both prescribed and wildfires, is a…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Project
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: organic aerosols, PM - particulate matter, biomass burning

The goal of this project was to develop the Plume Dynamics and Meteorology portion of the Study Plan for the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE). The Investigators participated in regular meetings with the other discipline leads, modeling leads, and the science…
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: plume dynamics, FASMEE - Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment, meteorology

Fire is a major ecosystem disturbance that profoundly impacts vegetation dynamics, atmospheric trace gases and aerosol composition, climate, and the welfare of wildlife and human society. While climate is generally a critical driving factor shaping the occurrence, size, and…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Fire Occurrence
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: fire feedbacks, biomass burning, CO2 - carbon dioxide

Recent advancements in fire-atmosphere numerical modeling have increased the number of physical processes integrated into these coupled models. This greater complexity allows for more comprehensive representation of the coupled interactions and feedbacks between the fire and the…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): Great Basin, Southwest
Keywords: FASMEE - Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment, WRF-SFIRE-CHEM, WRF-SFIRE

Particulate matter emissions from wildfires affect climate, weather and air quality. However, existing global and regional aerosol emission estimates differ by a factor of up to 4 between different methods. Using a novel approach, we estimate daily total particulate matter (TPM…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California, Eastern, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International
Keywords: Canada, PM - particulate matter, wildfires, aerosols, HYSPLIT - Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory, MODIS - Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, AOT - aerosol optical thickness, boreal forests, temperate forests, air quality

US surface O3 responds to varying global-to-regional precursor emissions, climate, and extreme weather, with implications for designing effective air quality control policies. We examine these conjoined processes with observations and global chemistry-climate model (GFDL-AM3)…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: Asia, wildfires, O3 - ozone, ozone, surface ozone, climate change, isoprene emissions, air quality

Wildland fire smoke is a complex mixture of air contaminants that have the potential cause adverse health effects. Individuals can be exposed occupationally if they work as wildland firefighters or public exposure from ambient air that is contaminated with smoke from a nearby or…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Fire Prevention, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: smoke exposure, human health, firefighters, public health, air pollution impacts

Fires are increasing in frequency, size and intensity partly due to climate change and land management practices, yet there is limited knowledge of the impacts of smoke emissions - both short term and long term. EPA is using its expertise in air quality research to fill the gaps…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Website
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Aquatic, Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Monitoring and Inventory, Prescribed Fire, Safety, Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air quality, climate change, public health, smoke management, health impacts, wildfires, water supply, research, community protection