A statistical model for determining impact of wildland fires on Particulate Matter (PM2.5) in Central California aided by satellite imagery of smoke

Preisler, Haiganoush K.; Schweizer, Donald; Cisneros, Ricardo; Procter, Trent; Ruminski, M.; Tarnay, Leland

doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2015.06.018

Cited by 42 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(20 reference statements)

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“…, Schweizer and Cisneros , Preisler et al. ). However, if prescribed fire were to receive different treatment from air quality regulations, agricultural interests may well ask whether their burning techniques should be less regulated as well; after all, both involve the use of fire to manage natural resources.…”

Section: Addressing Political and Other External Constraints On Fire mentioning

confidence: 99%

U.S.federal fire and forest policy: emphasizing resilience in dry forests

Stephens¹,

et al. 2016

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Citation: Stephens, S. L., B. M. Collins, E. Biber, and P. Z. Fulé. 2016. U.S. federal fire and forest policy: emphasizing resilience in dry forests. Ecosphere 7(11):Abstract. Current U.S. forest fire policy emphasizes short-term outcomes versus long-term goals. This perspective drives managers to focus on the protection of high-valued resources, whether ecosystem-based or developed infrastructure, at the expense of forest resilience. Given these current and future challenges posed by wildland fire and because the U.S. Forest Service spent >50% of its budget on fire suppression in 2015, a review and reexamination of existing policy is warranted. One of the most difficult challenges to revising forest fire policy is that agency organizations and decision making processes are not structured in ways to ensure that fire management is thoroughly considered in management decisions. Current resource-specific policies are so focused on individual concerns that they may be missing the fact that there are "endangered landscapes" that are threatened by changing climate and fire. We propose that forest restoration should be at least equal to other land management priorities because large-scale restoration is necessary for the sake of forest ecosystem integrity now and into the future. Another proposal is to switch the "default" rule in federal planning documents that currently have to "justify" managed wildland fire; instead, U.S. federal agencies should be required to disclose the long-term ecological impacts of continued fire suppression. Proposed legislation that identifies the most expensive 2% of wildfires annually to be funded from emergency funding instead of by the federal land management agencies. If increases in forest restoration fail to accompany the change in how large wildfires are funded, then U.S. fire suppression costs will remain high while resilience will continue to decline. Expansion of the wildland-urban interface will continue to drive suppression costs higher; new federal partnerships with States and local governments are needed to address this problem. Given the legacy of fire suppression and a future of climate change, management for other values in forests will be, in the long run, futile without also managing for long-term forest resilience.

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Section: Addressing Political and Other External Constraints On Fire mentioning

confidence: 99%

U.S.federal fire and forest policy: emphasizing resilience in dry forests

Stephens¹,

et al. 2016

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“…This and other satellite sensing systems used for characterizing surface air quality are reviewed by Martin [80]. Some researchers have augmented these datasets with ground-level air quality monitoring to address these limitations [82]. Satellite remote sensing of the atmosphere can provide a unique opportunity to understand global and regional scale presence of elevated pollution events, such as wildfires but are limited with regard to local-scale applications.…”

Section: Spatiotemporal Smoke Exposure Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Optical satellite imaging (e.g., the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer-MISR; https://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/) has been used to complement atmospheric sensing to derive information on smoke plume structure, including assessing plume height and density and to validate plume rise and trajectory for smoke modeling. Smoke plume images provide an avenue to improve smoke models and for validating smoke dispersion information, but they do not provide surface level pollutant concentrations by themselves [82,83]. The real value of satellite sensing for air quality lies in its use for supporting atmospheric chemical transport models.…”

Section: Spatiotemporal Smoke Exposure Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Modeled Exposure of Wildland Fire Smoke for Human Health Studies in California

et al. 2019

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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 maternal health. Using atmospheric chemical transport modeling, we examined general air quality with and without wildland fire smoke PM 2.5 . The 24-h average concentration of PM 2.5 from all sources in 12-km gridded output from all sources in California (2007-2013) was 4.91 µg/m 3 . The average concentration of fire-PM 2.5 in California by year was 1.22 µg/m 3 (~25% of total PM 2.5 ). The fire-PM 2.5 daily mean was estimated at 4.40 µg/m 3 in a high fire year (2008). Based on the model-derived fire-PM 2.5 data, 97.4% of California's population lived in a county that experienced at least one episode of high smoke exposure ("smokewave") from 2007-2013. Photochemical model predictions of wildfire impacts on daily average PM 2.5 carbon (organic and elemental) compared to rural monitors in California compared well for most years but tended to over-estimate wildfire impacts for 2008 (2.0 µg/m 3 bias) and 2013 (1.6 µg/m 3 bias) while underestimating for 2009 (−2.1 µg/m 3 bias). The modeling system isolated wildfire and PM 2.5 from other sources at monitored and unmonitored locations, which is important for understanding population exposure in health studies. Further work is needed to refine model predictions of wildland fire impacts on air quality in order to increase confidence in the model for future assessments. Atmospheric modeling can be a useful tool to assess broad geographic scale exposure for epidemiologic studies and to examine scenario-based health impacts.

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“…Although this approach has limitationsparticularly when considering low smoke densities -the HMS categories can nonetheless be very useful when assessing the extent (and impacts) of wildland fire smoke, or when attempting to verify ground observations. Readers who are interested in a detailed discussion of how HMS smoke densities can be related to surface level PM 2.5 should consult Preisler et al (2015).…”

Section: Remote Sensing Of Wildland Fire Smokementioning

confidence: 99%