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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

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

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

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

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

The Western Governors’ Association hosted the webinar, Prescribed Fire: Smoke Management and Regulatory Challenges on Dec. 19, 2017 as part of the series for the National Forest and Rangeland Management Initiative. Prescribed fire is a tool for land managers to address wildfire…
Person: Lahm, Melvin, Uhl
Year: 2017
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Prevention, Models, Prescribed Fire, Regulations and Legislation, Restoration and Rehabilitation
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air quality, legal liability, land management, wildfires, smoke management, exceptional event, smoke management plan

Join us in a discussion on how climatic changes can influence wildland fire activity across the globe and how these critical fire weather variables have changed over the last 40 years. These changes in key weather variables have combined to both lengthen the fire season and…
Person: West, Legarza, Jolly, Emanuel, Knight
Year: 2017
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Economics, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Occurrence, Fire Prevention, Hazard and Risk, Restoration and Rehabilitation, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: climate change, relative humidity, rain, annual precipitation, fire regimes, fire danger indices, fire season length, fire return interval, global carbon cycle, Forest Resilience Bond, fire suppression, fire suppression costs

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

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

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

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

Biomass burning is an important source to the atmosphere of carbonaceous particulate matter that impacts air quality, climate, and human health. The semivolatile nature of directly-emitted organic particulate matter can result in particle evaporation as smoke plumes dilute.…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: organic aerosols, biomass burning, phase partitioning, smog, plume, photooxidation, PM - particulate matter

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