Smoke

Wildfires have become more severe and have burned larger swaths of the western United States and Canada in recent decades. The smoke from these wildfires contains hundreds of different gases and aerosols, which have significant negative impacts on air quality, climate, and public health. One way to combat potential future fires is through prescribed burning, but the smoke from these fires also pose a risk and nuisance to nearby communities. 

Featured Work

• To better understand the relative abundance of smoke pollutants, known as emission factors, USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists set out to measure the emission factors from Douglas fir, ponderosa pine, and black spruce/jack pine forest fuels.
• A recent Rocky Mountain Research Station project reviewed and synthesized wildland fire emission data from over 40 studies to create an updated, comprehensive database of emission factors. The updated emission factor database provides emission factors for nearly 200 gaseous and particulate pollutants emitted by wildland fires. The emission factor database has been integrated into the most recent version of First Order Fire Effects Monitoring (FOFEM).
• Rocky Mountain Research Station hosted a State of the Science webinar about smoke that brought together wildland fire smoke experts from a number of organizations to share the latest knowledge about smoke with fire and land managers. A product of the webinar, the Smoke 101 fact sheet lays out scientific concepts related to smoke, and describes the differences between smoke from wildfires and prescribed fires.
• The Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE) is a large-scale inter-agency effort, involving a number of Forest Service scientists, to identify how fuels, fire behavior, fire energy, and meteorology interact to determine the dynamics of smoke plumes, the long-range transport of smoke and local fire effects such as soil heating and vegetative response.
• The book "Wildland Fire Smoke in the United States: A Scientific Assessment" summarizes our current understanding about smoke science and provides direction for future research needs.