Keyword: smoke management

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The challenge of minimizing the impacts of smoke on the public while expanding the role of fire in land management has never been greater, as air quality standards tighten and the wildland-urban interface expands with people looking to live in natural environments with clean air.

Smoke emissions from prescribed burning of southern California chaparral.

This report characterizes smoke emissions from small-scale prescribed burns in southern California chaparral. In situ measurements of smoke emissions were made from 12 fires.

Wildland fire in ecosystems: effects of fire on air

This state-of-knowledge review about the effects of fire on air quality can assist land, fire, and air resource managers with fire and smoke planning, and their efforts to explain to others the science behind fire-related program policies and practices to improve air quality.

Applying the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) to support risk-informed decision making: The Gold Pan Fire, Bitterroot National Forest, Montana, USA

In response to federal wildfire policy changes, risk-informed decision-making by way of improved decision support, is increasingly becoming a component of managing wildfires. As fire incidents escalate in size and complexity, the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) provides support with different analytical tools as fire conditions change.

Decision making under uncertainty: Recommendations for the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS)

The management of wildfire is a dynamic, complex, and fundamentally uncertain enterprise. Fire managers face uncertainties regarding fire weather and subsequent influence on fire behavior, the effects of fire on socioeconomic and ecological resources, and the efficacy of alternative suppression actions on fire outcomes.

Characterizing large airtanker use in United States fire management

The appropriate role of large airtankers (LATs) in federal fire suppression in the United States has been the source of much debate and discussion in recent years as the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has faced impending decisions about how best to address an aging fleet of contracted aircraft. Questions of fleet efficiency are complicated by inadequacies in historical data on airtanker use.

Regional likelihood of very large wildfires over the 21st century across the western United States: Motivation to study individual events like the Rim Fire, a unique opportunity with unprecedented remote sensing data

Studies project that a warming climate will likely increase wildfire activity in many areas (Westerling and others 2002; Flannigan and others 2005, 2009; Littell and others 2009). These analyses are often of aggregate statistics like annual area burned, which are insufficient for analyzing changes in seasonality of fire events, the temporal resolution useful for fire management and understanding what drives individual events.

Near real-time wildfire mapping using spatially-refined satellite data: The rim fire case study

Fire incident teams depend on accurate fire diagnostics and predictive data to guide daily positioning and tactics of fire crews. Currently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture - Forest Service National Infrared Operations (NIROPs) nighttime airborne data provides daily information about the fire front and total fire affected area of priority fires to the incident teams on the ground.

Initial results from a field experiment to support the assessment of fuel treatment effectiveness in reducing wildfire intensity and spread rate

Hazardous fuel reduction treatments conducted both through prescribed fire and mechanical means are a critical part of the mitigation of wildland fire risk in the United States. The US Federal Government has spent an average of $500t million each year on fuel reduction, from 2002-2012 (Gorte 2011).

Temporal changes to fire risk in dissimilar WUI communities

Despite increasing proportions of governmental budgets allocated to fire suppression resources, wildfires annually destroy great numbers of homes and critical infrastructure in the wildland-urban interface (WUI).