Smoke Management Guides and Resources

Below, you will find the most recent guides and resources addressing smoke management, health and safety, and more.

Guides Addressing Smoke

• NWCG Smoke Management Guide for Prescribed Fire - Information on prescribed fire smoke management techniques, regulations, monitoring, modeling, communication, perception and meteorology. Serve as the textbook in support of NWCG’s Smoke Management Techniques (RX-410) course. Hard copies of this publication are now available through the National Wildfire Coordinating Group.

• Prescribed Fire Smoke Management Pocket Guide - A pocket guide created by the Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils and SERPPAS which includes rules, checklists, and other resources to serve as a job aid for those needing to recall the rules and guidelines associated with proper prescribed smoke management practices and planned burns

• Basic smoke management practices for prescribed burning - This fact sheet briefly summarizes many of the key elements in the USFS-NRCS Basic Smoke Management Practices guide. The USFS-NRCS guidance summarized by this resource is available in the FRAMES Catalog, record 20307.

• Managing smoke at the wildland-urban interface - This guide describes modifications to the Southern Smoke Screening System for burns at the Wildland Urban Interface. 

Health And Safety Resources

• Smoke Ready Toolbox for Wildfires - Public health officials can use the resources in the Smoke Ready Toolbox to help educate the public about the risks of smoke exposure and actions people can take to protect their health.

• DRAFT Wildland Fire Personnel Smoke Exposure Guidebook (March 2016) - This guide covers situations in both wild and prescribed fires and is a more detailed supporting document for the National Wildland Fire Coordinating Group’s video ‘Smoke: Knowing the Risks ’.

• WFSTAR: Smoke - Knowing the Risks - A 13 minute Refresher on the smoke risks that wildland fire personnel should be aware of.

• Smoke and Roadway Safety Guide - Guidebook in support of the National Wildland Fire Coordinating Group’s video 'Smoke, Roads, and Safety ', providing tools and methods to effectively roadway smoke impacts.

• Wildfire Smoke: A Guide for Public Health Officials - This guide is designed to help local public health officials prepare for smoke events, to take measures to protect the public when smoke is present, and communicate with the public about wildfire smoke and health.

• Fact Sheet for Fire Managers: Wildland Fire Smoke Effects on Public Health What Does the Research Say - A short fact sheet from the Southern Fire Exchange summarizing the latest research on smoke effects on public health. From the 

Outreach Resources

• AirNow, Air Quality Index - The Air Quality Index (AQI) tells you how clean or polluted your outdoor air is, along with associated health effects that may be of concern. The AQI translates air quality data into numbers and colors that help people understand when to take action to protect their health.
• Fire and Smoke Map - An online map which combines data from EPA’s air monitoring network with data from low-cost sensors, to improve air quality and smoke information available to the public during fire events.

• Smoke Blogs - This page links to real time smoke blogs coordinated and maintained by various states and agencies to aggregate smoke and air quality information.

Modeling Tools

• Smoke Tools and Information for Use During Wildfires - A video presentation from Susan O'Neill (Air Fire Team) outlining smoke tools and information for use on wildfires (43 minutes).

• AirFire Tools.org - Main portal to access the web-based smoke planning and monitoring tools developed by AirFire such as BlueSky Playground, Monitoring PM2.5, and others. Each tool is listed along with a 'More Info' link that provides help pages, user information, and more.
• BlueSky Playground - BlueSky Playground provides interactive access to the models and calculations enabled by the BlueSky Framework. Users can enter basic fire information and compute various fuels, fire, and emissions information as well as model plume rise and smoke dispersion.
• Fuel and Fire Tools (FFT) - Downloadable application for assessing fuel loading, fuel consumption, and emissions production, it contains the Fuel Characteristics Classification System, Consume, FEPS, Pile Calculator, and Digital Photo Series in a single user interface.
• First Order Fire Effects Model (FOFEM) - Downloadable application for predicting tree mortality, fuel consumption, smoke production, and soil heating caused by prescribed fire or wildfire.
• HYSPLIT - The HYSPLIT (Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory) model computes simple air parcel trajectories and complex dispersion, and simulates deposition. The link provided here directs to the HYSPLIT main page with options for both internet-based and desktop based (PC-HYSPLIT) versions of the model.
• PB-Peidmont - PB-Peidmont is a land surface model developed as a tool to evaluate low-level transport / dispersion of smoke. Built for nighttime smoke from prescribed fires, it also has potential use for wildfire smoke under similar meteorological conditions. The link provided directs to the web version of this tool, there is a desktop version as well.

Using Satellite Data

• Satellite Data for Smoke and Fire - A series of training videos overviewing satellite data products and their use for smoke and fire applications.