Emerging Research Needs

Several new responsibilities create the need for additional information systems that require new research and development, including:

• Planning rules that require the consideration of cumulative pollution and visibility impacts of fuel management programs.
• Wildland fire situation analysis requirements that smoke impacts from wildland be anticipated and communicated to the public.
• Increased requirements for emission reduction.
• Policies that require hourly and daily tracking of emissions and the management of smoke from all fires.
• Increased management of wildland fires for resource benefits.
• Increased use of long-duration landscape-scale fires.
• Regulatory concern over secondary pollutants, especially ozone formation and the reentrainment of mercury.
• Questions about the role of fire and global biomass emission on atmospheric carbon and global warming.
• Increased attention to firefighter health effects from exposure to smoke.

Each of these factors requires information systems for planning, operations, and monitoring the effects of fire on air. Some emerging research needs are outlined below under three categories:  emission sources strength and emissions inventory, ambient air quality impacts, and effects on receptors.

Emission Source Strength and Emissions Inventory

Level of burn activity: Accurately predict, determine, and record the area burned and time of burning for all types of prescribed and wildland fire--Area burned is still the parameter that imparts the greatest error into predictions of source strength and emission inventory. Needed are: a balanced program of new planning models that project area burned and fire residence times; remote-sensing technologies that track fire sizes at hourly intervals; ground based sampling, reporting, and communication systems; and analysis tools. Planning models include those that project fire use and predict wildland fire activity from 1 to 50 years in the future must be included, as well as accurate predictions made a day in advance.

Biomass: Accurately predict, determine, and record the mass, combustion stage, and residence time of fuels burned in all types of fires-- Inadequate representation of fuelbed characteristics and the ability to infer fuelbed characteristics and flammability conditions from remote sensing or ecosystem physiognomy is the second greatest remaining source of error. Models of the combustion process, while improving, are still inadequate to predict or characterize emission rates and durations. New classification systems, inference models, inventory and sensing processes, and process models are needed.

Heat release and emissions: Predict and mea-sure physical and chemical characteristics of emissions from all types of fires--Among the greatest advances since about 1980 has been the nearly complete characterization of primary and criteria pollutants from a wide range of fire environments. New models also greatly improve the prediction and characterization of emissions source strength. Emission factors for criteria pollutants are adequate. There is substantial remaining uncertainly in the measurement and prediction of precursors to ozone and other secondary chemical formations, secondary entrainment of mercury, production and stimulation of nitrogen compounds, air toxics, and greenhouse gases. Continuing research on these trace constituents are needed. In addition, we lack models that characterize the complex spatial and temporal distribution of heat release from fires.

Emissions inventory methods: Integrate measurements and reporting from remote sensing, airborne platforms, simulation models, and surface observations into a fine-scale spatial and temporal emission inventory--Emission inventories are a fundamental tool that air resource managers use to calculate the relative importance of air pollution sources and to design control strategies. Hourly, point-specific emission estimates as well as daily, monthly, and yearly summaries are necessary to compare fire with other sources or as inputs to dispersion models. Fire managers currently lack a system of observations and reporting mechanisms required for planning, tracking, and monitoring emissions.

Ambient Air Quality Impacts

Background air quality: Improve the accessibility of girded detail about background air quality and meteorological conditions--Fire emissions are inserted into an already complex atmosphere, and current ability to predict pollutant interactions, transformations, and combined effects are limited by the availability of hourly fine-scale atmospheric profiling.

Plume rise and transport: Improve the pre-diction, detection, and tracking of plumes from all types and stages of fires--Fire plumes are complex; often splitting into lofted and unlofted portions; plumes that split in two directions at different altitudes, and plumes that change rapidly over time. Plumes are transported long distances, often over complex terrain, and the accuracy and availability of models to predict transport are inadequate. Methods to track plume trajectories and measure pollutant concentrations in near real time using remote sensing are emerging but not yet available.

Dispersion, dilution, and pollutant transformation: Improve the ability on all scales to predict, model, and detect changes in the proper- ties and concentration of pollutants over time and space--Data and models are needed to initiate and predict local, regional, national, and global air quality impacts from individual fires to the cumulative effects of tens of thousands of fires.

Atmospheric carbon balance and climatic change: Develop consistent technologies to assess the contribution of fires to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the effect of fire and ecosystem management practices--For a source of greenhouse gas emissions as large as wildland and prescribed fires, there is a regrettable lack of consensus on the magnitude or even the methods for assessment and accountability. This emerging issue requires much of the same research on source characteristics and air quality as do the health, safety, and visibility issues, but also requires integration with the global science and policy communities.

Effects on Receptors

Visibility and other welfare effects: Predict, measure, and interpret the impact of natural and anthropogenic fire sources on visibility, economic, and other welfare effects--The impact of smoke exposure from fires on human health standards is minor relative to the nuisance it creates and the impacts on visibility. New science is required to monitor and predict effects on visibility, and to apportion visibility impacts to specific sources and classes of sources.

Health and safety risk assessment: Develop knowledge and systems to assess the risk of individual and collective fires to personal and community health and safety--This broad topic has received limited attention in recent years, mostly in the prediction of visibility impacts on highway safety and in the assessment of individual firefighter exposure to hazardous air pollutants. But all aspects of risk management, including hazard identification, exposure assessment, dose-response, risk assessment, and mitigation measures are lacking.