The impact of diverse types of biomass burning in a tropical country

Abstract

We couple laboratory work, airborne and ground-based field measurements, remote sensing of fires, and modeling to assess the impact of diverse types of biomass burning (BB) in Mexico as a model tropical country. About 70-80% of open BB occurs in the tropics along with large amounts of biofuel use and garbage burning (GB); both in rural and urban areas. During the Mexican dry season two instrumented aircraft measured emission factors (EF) from 57 fires including crop residue, tropical forest deforestation, pine forest, and savanna fires and GB. A mobile ground-based lab sampled 22 fires including GB, crop residue and cooking fires, and brick/charcoal-making kilns. The Fire INventory from NCAR (FINN) model calculates that open BB consumes 96 Tg of biomass in Mexico in a typical year and an estimated 68 Tg of biofuel is also consumed in Mexico in an average year. The fuel consumption estimates, coupled with our field-measured EF, indicate that the total BB emissions of CO and primary PM2.5 exceed those from fossil fuel (FF) use in Mexico by factors of about 1.4 and 40-50, respectively.

Citation

Yokelson, R. J.; Burling, I. R.; Urbanski, S. P.; Christian, T. J.; Atlas, E. L.; Wiedinmyer, C.; Akagi, S. K.; Engling, G. 2010. The impact of diverse types of biomass burning in a tropical country. American Geophysical Union. Fall Meeting: Abstract #A31G-07.