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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

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

Prescribed burns of winter wheat stubble and Kentucky bluegrass fields in northern Idaho and eastern Washington states (U.S.A.) were sampled using ground-, aerostat-, airplane-, and laboratory-based measurement platforms to determine emission factors, compare methods, and…
Person:
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Ecology, Fire Effects, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): Northern Rockies, Northwest
Keywords: air quality, Idaho, Washington, agricultural burning, emission factors, wheat, bluegrass, particulate matter, organics, trace gas emissions, crop residue, combustion efficiency, carbon measurements, particulate matter, optical properties, PCDD/F emissions, forecast system

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

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

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

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

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

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

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