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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

The literature-spanning several recent decades-describes numerous attempts to characterize the efficacy of cumulonimbus 'Cb' convection as a pollutant pathway connecting the planetary BL to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS). The relatively new discovery of…
Person:
Year: 2019
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, International, National
Keywords: aerosols, convection, cloud, cumulonimbus

A novel approach is presented to analyze smoke exposure and provide a metric to quantify health-related impacts. Our results support the current understanding that managing low-intensity fire for ecological benefit reduces exposure when compared to a high-intensity full…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Fire Prevention, Prescribed Fire
Region(s): California
Keywords: forest fires, air quality, exposure assessment, remote sensing, fire management, smoke exposure, fire suppression, health

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

Fire behavior video from the 2019 Walker Fire recorded by the Fire Behavior Assessment Team (FBAT) in coordination with collection of fuels, vegetation, fire behavior, and fire effects data. The FBAT website (see below) provides links to reports on each fire ("Reports and…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, Fuels, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California
Keywords: Plumas National Forest, California, Plumas County, moderate wind, low rate of spread, backing fire, surface fire, torching, high severity fire, burnout operation, unmanaged fuels, 2019 Walker Fire

Fire behavior video from the 2019 Walker Fire recorded by the Fire Behavior Assessment Team (FBAT) in coordination with collection of fuels, vegetation, fire behavior, and fire effects data. The FBAT website (see below) provides links to reports on each fire ("Reports and…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, Fuels, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California
Keywords: Plumas National Forest, California, Plumas County, moderate wind, low rate of spread, backing fire, surface fire, low severity fire, unburned, uncontained widlfire, activity fuels, fire suppression, 2019 Walker Fire

Fire behavior video from the 2019 Walker Fire recorded by the Fire Behavior Assessment Team (FBAT) in coordination with collection of fuels, vegetation, fire behavior, and fire effects data. The FBAT website (see below) provides links to reports on each fire ("Reports and…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, Fuels, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California
Keywords: Plumas National Forest, California, Plumas County, light wind, low rate of spread, backing fire, surface fire, moderate severity fire, unburned, uncontained widlfire, activity fuels, fire suppression, 2019 Walker Fire

Fire behavior video from the 2019 Walker Fire recorded by the Fire Behavior Assessment Team (FBAT) in coordination with collection of fuels, vegetation, fire behavior, and fire effects data. The FBAT website (see below) provides links to reports on each fire ("Reports and…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, Fuels, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California
Keywords: Plumas National Forest, California, Plumas County, light wind, low rate of spread, backing fire, surface fire, moderate severity fire, unburned, uncontained widlfire, activity fuels, fire suppression, 2019 Walker Fire

Fire behavior video from the 2019 Walker Fire recorded by the Fire Behavior Assessment Team (FBAT) in coordination with collection of fuels, vegetation, fire behavior, and fire effects data. The FBAT website (see below) provides links to reports on each fire ("Reports and…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Behavior, Fire Ecology, Fuels, Monitoring and Inventory
Region(s): California
Keywords: Plumas National Forest, California, Plumas County, light wind, low rate of spread, backing fire, surface fire, moderate severity fire, unburned, uncontained widlfire, activity fuels, fire suppression, 2019 Walker Fire

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

Deforestation from timber harvests and farmland conversions have led to 565 GtCO2 (billion tons of carbon dioxide) being emitted into the atmosphere. Taking into account natural regeneration on forestland, Houghton (2003, 2008) and Houghton et al. (2012) estimate that…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Economics, Emissions and Smoke
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, International, National
Keywords: climate change, land use change, forest carbon, carbon emissions, deforestation, fire management

Carbon monoxide (CO) exposure levels encountered by wildland firefighters (WLFs) throughout their work shift can change considerably within a few minutes due to the varied tasks that are performed and the changing environmental and fire conditions encountered throughout the day…
Person:
Year: 2019
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: firefighters, smoke exposure, CO - carbon monoxide, carboxyhemoglobin, data loggers, elevation, sawyer, shift length

Wildland firefighters engaged in fire suppression activities are often exposed to hazardous air pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and particulate matter (PM2.5) during wildfires with no respiratory protection. Although the most significant exposures to…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Safety
Region(s): California
Keywords: firefighters, ICP - Incident Command Post, PAH - polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PM - particulate matter, PM2.5, wildfires, firefighter exposure

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

It is a well‐known fact that sometimes a halo display heralds an approaching cyclone, but could a halo display be an indicator of the presence of wildfire smoke and poor air quality? This article presents a few examples of unusual solar halos that formed over altocumulus clouds…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects
Region(s): California
Keywords: air quality, atmosphere

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

Epidemiological studies consistently show an association between wildfire-related smoke exposure and adverse respiratory health. We conducted a systematic review of evidence in published literature pertaining to heterogeneity of respiratory effects from this exposure in North…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Safety
Region(s): California, Eastern, Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest
Keywords: wildfires, respiratory health, heterogeneity, ratio of relative risk, public health

Forest ecosystems sequester approximately 12% of anthropogenic carbon emissions, and efforts to increase forest carbon uptake are central to climate change mitigation policy. Managing forests to store carbon has focused on increasing forested area, decreasing area lost to…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: carbon emissions, climate change, forest carbon, forest management, carbon management

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 aerosols released from biomass burning greatly influence air quality, weather, and climate. The total particulate matter (TPM) of smoke aerosols has been demonstrated to be a linear function of fire radiative energy (FRE) during a period of biomass burning via a smoke…
Person:
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Topic(s): Climate, Emissions and Smoke, Fire Effects, Weather
Region(s): Alaska, California, Eastern, Great Basin, Hawaii, Northern Rockies, Northwest, Rocky Mountain, Southern, Southwest, National
Keywords: Indonesia, emission coefficient, MODIS - Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, FRE - Fire Radiative Energy, smoke aerosols, PM - particulate matter, air quality, MODIS active fires