Optical Properties of Biomass Burning Aerosols from Simulated Wildfires and Prescribed Fires with Representative Fuel Beds from the Southeast United States

Abstract

We report measurements of the absorption Ångström exponent (AAE) and single scattering albedo (SSA) of biomass burning aerosol from the combustion of fuel beds representing three eco-regions of the Southeast U.S. (Piedmont, Coastal Plain, and Blue Ridge Mountains) with moisture content representative of wildfires and prescribed fires. We find a strong correlation between the AAE and SSA for both simulated wildfires (low fuel moisture) and prescribed fires (higher fuel moisture). For wildfires, the AAE and SSA are strongly dependent on the eco-region of the fuel bed and span a much wider range (AAE = 1.3–4.2, SSA = 0.75–0.97) than they do for prescribed fires (AAE = 2.4–3.1, SSA = 0.88–0.96). The AAE and SSA are also found to be correlated with the fraction of total carbon that is elemental carbon (f EC) for both wildfires and prescribed fires, but the range of f EC observed (0.02–0.14) from the fuel beds is much smaller than that reported previously from laboratory studies using individual fuels. The observations from the present study suggest that fuel-bed composition and moisture content are significant factors in determining the relative amount of organic material in biomass burning aerosols and, consequentially, their optical properties.