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The purposes of the Arkansas Voluntary Smoke Management Guidelines (guidelines) are to assure adherence to air quality regulations and to manage smoke from prescribed fire so the smoke’s impact on people will be acceptable. These guidelines will allow the prescribed fire manager…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke
Region(s): Eastern
Keywords:

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

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

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

At the request of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) Equipment and Technology Committee, the National Technology and Development Center undertook a project to determine the exposure levels of wildland smoke to firefighters. In 2010, at the request of the NWCG Risk…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: carcinogen, respirable dust, inhalation irritants, particulate exposure, vegetative smoke

Diagnostic carbon cycle models produce estimates of net ecosystem production (NEP, the balance of net primary production and heterotrophic respiration) by integrating information from (i) satellite-based observations of land surface vegetation characteristics; (ii) distributed…
Person:
Year: 2013
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, International, National
Keywords: Canada, carbon flux, atmospheric inversion, NEP - Net Ecosystem Productivity, rivers, Mexico, biomass burning, NEE - net ecosystem exchange

Several state air quality agencies have developed policies to issue air quality health index (AQI) warnings based on low values of visual range. Visual range has been defined in the context of how far away a black object has to be such that it is just noticeable or visible. This…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air quality, visual range, PM2.5 emissions, particulate matter (PM) concentrations, AQI - Air Quality Index

Filter-based samplers have long been employed by monitoring networks to measure aerosol mass concentrations because they are robust and the collected filters can be used for analysis of speciated mass concentrations. However, filter-based samplers have several disadvantages.…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: NAAQS - National Ambient Air Quality Standards, PM2.5 emissions, PM10 emissions, continuous measurements

Before about 1970, visibility was meant only to denote the human capability to detect, recognize, and identify objects by means of the human visual mechanism. During the 1970s, as energy development in the form of strip mines and coal-fired power plants with associated emissions…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air quality, haze, public health, urban air pollution, urban visibility

Space-borne sensors provide the only way to monitor the global distribution and characteristics of fire. Dramatic satellite maps showing fire activity across the entire Earth have been providing a unique picture of fire activity for the last three decades. This chapter…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: satellite remote sensing, flaming, smoldering fires, fire-affected area

Several major car pileups with fatalities have resulted as a consequence of the formation of a dense smoke cloud which reduces visibility to less than 3 meters. These conditions of low visibility are known as Superfog. Continuing from work done by Dr. Gary Achtemeier,…
Person:
Year: 2013
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: superfog, laboratory experiments, fuel moisture, wind velocity

Of particular concern to fire and air-quality management communities throughout the U.S. are the behavior and air-quality impacts of low-intensity prescribed fires for fuels management. For example, smoke from prescribed fires, which often occur in wildland-urban interface (WUI…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fuels, Models, Planning, Prescribed Fire, Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
Region(s): Eastern
Keywords: air quality, New Jersey

Both long duration (>6 h) and high temperature (up to 139 °C) sampling efforts were conducted using ambient air sampling methods to determine if either high volume throughput or higher than ambient air sampling temperatures resulted in loss of target polychlorinated…
Person:
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air quality, PCDD - polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins, PCDF - polychlorinated dibenzofurans, open burning, quality control, air samples

This project, a collaboration between Colorado State University (CSU), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the University of Washington (UW), and the National Park Service (NPS), investigated the atmospheric aging of biomass burning plumes in order to examine changes in both…
Person:
Year: 2013
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, International, National
Keywords: biomass burning, plumes, Canada, IMPROVE, PM - particulate matter