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The impact of wildland fire smoke on air quality and health is an issue growing in importance to many health officials across the country, as well as federal, state and local decision-makers. This webinar gives an overview of EPA’s tools and resources available to provide public…
Person: Long
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Mapping, Models, Safety
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: air quality, PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, public health, wildland fire, wildfire, EPA - Environmental Protection Agency, mitigation, air pollution, health risk

Climate influences vegetation directly and through climate-mediated disturbance processes, such as wildfire. Temperature and area burned are positively associated, conditional on availability of vegetation to burn. Fire is a self-limiting process that is influenced by…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Ecology, Fire Effects, Fuels, Models
Region(s): California
Keywords: Sierra Nevada, climate change, wildfires, climatic factors, vegetation-fire feedbacks, area burned, CO2 - carbon dioxide, PM - particulate matter, fuel availability, fuel flammability

This seminar is part of the USFS Missoula Fire Lab Seminar Series. The National Weather Service (NWS) Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis (RTMA) has been developed to provide a national standard Analysis of Record (AoR) for large scale verification and bias-correction efforts. The RTMA…
Person: Leach
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Models, Safety, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: RTMA - Real Time Mesoscale Analysis, URMA - Un-Restricted Mesoscale Analysis, AoR - Analysis of Record, atmospheric moisture, ARA - Air Resource Advisor, air quality, ADI - Atmospheric Dispersion Index, LVORI - Low Visibility Occurrence Risk Index, visibility, health impacts

Biomass mapping is used in variety of applications including carbon assessments, emission inventories, and wildland fire and fuel planning. Single values are often applied to individual pixels to represent biomass of classified vegetation, but each biomass estimate has…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fuels, Mapping, Models, Planning
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: C - carbon, biomass, remote sensing, uncertainty, wildland fuel, Canada, fire management

The Advanced Fire Environment Learning Unit (AFELU) will host three speakers to talk about Predictive Services comparison tools (Robert Ziel, Alaska Fire Science Consortium), predicting fire behavior in Alaska (Chris Moore, Alaska Fire Service), and smoke tools (Pete Lahm, US…
Person: Ziel, Moore, Lahm
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Hazard and Risk, Mapping, Models, Safety, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: drought, landscape flammability, precipitation, NDVI - Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, PDI - Palmer Drought Index, FSPro - Fire Spread Probability, 2019 fire season, acres burned, ERC - Energy Release Component, wildfires, air quality, PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, BlueSky

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) has supported the development of a new resource for defining fuel loading across the variable landscapes of the US. The work entailed compiling existing data on fuel loadings categorized by Existing Vegetation Type (EVT). The data has been…
Person: French, Prichard, Kennedy, Billmire
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fuels, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: fuel loading, EVT - existing vegetation type, fuels database, fire operations research, smoke modeling

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) and the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) initiated the Fire and Smoke Model Experiment (FASMEE) (https://sites.google.com/firenet.gov/fasmee/) by funding Project 15-S-01-01 to identify and collect a set of…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Effects, Fuels, Models, Planning, Prescribed Fire, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: FASMEE - Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment, project management, large fire, experiments, fuel consumption, smoke modeling, fire modeling, energy release, plume rise, smoke transport, smoke dispersion, chemistry

We investigate the air quality impact of record‐breaking wildfires in Southern California during December 5-18, 2017 using the Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF‐Chem) in combination with satellite and surface observations. This wildfire event was driven…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): California
Keywords: air quality, WRF-Chem, WRF - Weather Research and Forecasting, PM2.5, PM - particulate matter, VIIRS - Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, AOD - aerosol optical depth

Wildfire is an essential earth‐system process, impacting ecosystem processes and the carbon cycle. Forest fires are becoming more frequent and severe, yet gaps exist in the modeling of fire on vegetation and carbon dynamics. Strategies for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Fuels, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: C - carbon, climate change mitigation, forests, greenhouse gas emissions, tree biomass, biomass consumption, biomass combustion factors

Wildland fire smoke exposure affects a broad proportion of the U.S. population and is increasing due to climate change, settlement patterns and fire seclusion. Significant public health questions surrounding its effects remain, including the impact on cardiovascular disease and…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Models, Safety
Region(s): California
Keywords: wildland fire, air quality, exposure, PM - particulate matter, geospatial analysis, public health, chemical transport model, atmospheric modeling, epidemiology

Most of the previous investigations on the relationship between PM2.5 chemical characteristics and wildfire focused on the predictions of particle components concentrations or future pollution scenarios. Little research has focused on trends analyses based on large temporal…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Weather
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: Generalized Additive Models, air pollution, wildfires, PM2.5, speciation, particulate carbon

Smoke from human-induced fires such as prescribed fires can occasionally cause significant reduction in visibility on highways in the southern United States. Visibility reduction to less than three meters has been termed 'superfog' and environmental conditions that lead to its…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: superfog, visibility, liquid water content, CCN - cloud condensation nuclei

Seasonal-mean concentrations of particulate matter with diameters smaller than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) have been decreasing across the United States (US) for several decades, with large reductions in spring and summer in the eastern US. In contrast, summertime-mean PM2.5 in the western…
Person:
Year: 2019
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: PM - particulate matter, PM2.5, fire frequency, area burned, smoke plumes, GEOS-Chem, GEOS-Chem CTM

The damage caused by forest fire to forestry resources and economy is quite serious. As one of the most important characters of early forest fire, smoke is widely used as a signal of forest fire. In this paper, we propose a novel forest fire smoke detection method based on…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Occurrence, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: smoke detection, smoke root, interactive modeling, fire detection

Fires play a critical role in modulating regional and global climate through disturbances on meteorological, biogeochemical, and hydrological processes, while fires are strongly affected by climate, terrestrial ecosystems, and human activities. The complex climate‐fire‐ecosystem…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Models, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: earth system models, model development, fire-climate interactions

The North American Wildland Fuels Database (NAWFD) data access application was developed to enable best practices for modeling national- and regional-scale fire emissions by incorporating uncertainty into fuels estimates. NAWFD aggregates fuel loading information from 26,620…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Website
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fuels, Intelligence, Mapping, Models
Region(s): California, Eastern, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest
Keywords: database, fuel loading, fuel strata, live fuels, CWD - coarse woody debris, fine woody debris, forest floor fuels, EVT - existing vegetation type

There is an urgent need for next-generation smoke research and forecasting (SRF) systems to meet the challenges of the growing air quality, health and safety concerns associated with wildland fire emissions. This review paper presents simulations and experiments of hypothetical…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Models, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: burn plans, measurement design, CMAQ - Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling System, DAYSMOKE, FIRETEC, WFDS - Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Dynamics Simulator, WRF-SFIRE-CHEM, FASMEE - Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment

Epidemiologists use prediction models to downscale (i.e., interpolate) air pollution exposure where monitoring data is insufficient. This study compares machine learning prediction models for ground-level ozone during wildfires, evaluating the predictive accuracy of ten…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): California
Keywords: air pollution, exposure modelling, machine learning, O3 - ozone, wildfires

Asthma is the most common pediatric disease in the USA. It has been consistently demonstrated that asthma symptoms are exacerbated by exposure to ozone. Ozone (O3) is a secondary pollutant produced when volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are oxidized in the atmosphere in the…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Mapping, Models, Safety
Region(s): California, Eastern, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest
Keywords: O3 - ozone, air quality, asthma, burden assessment, hazard map, VOC - volatile organic compounds, EOAS - elevated ozone associated with smoke

A new statistical model for predicting daily ground level fine scale particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations at monitoring sites in the western United States was developed and tested operationally during the 2016 and 2017 wildfire seasons. The model is site-specific, using a…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Models
Region(s): California, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southwest
Keywords: PM - particulate matter, PM2.5, AOD - aerosol optical depth, air quality, AQI - Air Quality Index, statistical models, FRP - Fire Radiative Power

A variety of environmental analysis applications have been advanced by the use of satellite remote sensing. Smoke detection based on satellite imagery is imperative for wildfire detection and monitoring. However, the commonly used smoke detection methods mainly focus on smoke…
Person:
Year: 2019
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, International, National
Keywords: smoke detection, wildfires, scene classification, CNN - convolution neural network, attention, remote sensing, MODIS - Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, satellite images

During the 2017 record-breaking burning season in Canada/United States, intense wild fires raged during the first week of September in the Pacific northwestern region (British Columbia, Alberta, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and northern California) burning mostly temperate…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: LiDAR - Light Detection and Ranging, time-space monitoring, smoke plume, smoke transport, plume injection height, particle dispersion, particle absorption, depolarization properties, AERONET - Aerosol Robotic Network, AOD - aerosol optical depth

During the summer of 2015, a number of large wildfires burned across northern California in areas of localized topographic relief. Persistent valley smoke hindered fire‐fighting efforts, delayed helicopter operations, and exposed communities to extreme concentrations of…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): California
Keywords: wildfires, inversion, WRF-Fire, WRF-SFIRE, WRF-SFIRE-CHEM

Fire smoke is a major contributor to both particulate matter (PM) and ozone exposure in urban centers. Epidemiological, clinical, and toxicological studies have demonstrated a casual relationship between these pollutants and cardiovascular and respiratory related deaths and…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Economics, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Hazard and Risk, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: Australia, human health, health impacts, PM - particulate matter, air quality, literature review

Fire smoke is a major contributor to both particulate matter (PM) and ozone exposure in urban centers. Epidemiological, clinical, and toxicological studies have demonstrated a casual relationship between these pollutants and cardiovascular and respiratory related deaths and…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Project
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Economics, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Models
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: PM - particulate matter, human health, health impacts, air quality, smoke exposure, Australia, health risk