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The impact of the 2016 Fort McMurray Horse River Wildfire on ambient air pollution levels in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region, Alberta, Canada
Citation:
Landis, M., E. Edgerton, E. White, G. Wentworth, A. Sullivan, AND A. Dillner. The impact of the 2016 Fort McMurray Horse River Wildfire on ambient air pollution levels in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region, Alberta, Canada. SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT. Elsevier BV, AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, 618:1665-1676, (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.008
Impact/Purpose:
Over the last fifty-five years (1960 – 2015) the number of wildfires in the United States has significantly decreased (Supporting Information (SI) Figure S1a), while the total acreage burned has significantly (SI Figure S1b) increased (1). Nine of the ten highest acreage burn years have occurred since 2000, including the peak of 4.1 million hectares in 2015. This time period coincides with many of the warmest years on record in the U.S. (2). The combination of increased temperature, drought, earlier snowmelt, and historically high fuel loading (e.g., undergrowth and tree density) generally promotes more aggressive fire behavior (3,4,5,6,7). In addition to increasing size, the intensity of fires estimated as both moderate (SI Figure S2a) or severe (SI Figure S2b) damage have significantly increased (8,9). In Canada over roughly the same time period (1961 – 2015) both the number of fires (SI Figure S3a) and the total acreage burned has significantly (SI Figure S3b) increased (10,11). However, the number of fires in Canada has leveled off over the last two decades (SI Figure S3c). In the Province of Alberta, the number of wildfires has steadily increased (SI Figure S4a) throughout the time period and peaked at 1,954 fires in 2006 (12). The trend in acreage burned in Alberta is generally stable with typical annual totals <100,00 ha totals, punctuated by periodic large catastrophic fires (SI Figure S4b), like the 2011 Richardson Backcountry fire that consumed more than 577,000 hectares in a remote northern portion of the Province (12).
Description:
An unprecedented wildfire impacted the northern Alberta city of Fort McMurray in May 2016 causing a mandatory city wide evacuation and the loss of 2,400 homes and commercial structures. A comprehensive air monitoring network operated by the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association (WBEA) in and around Fort McMurray provided essential health-related real-time air quality data to firefighters during the emergency, and provided a rare opportunity to elucidate the impact of gaseous and particulate matter emissions on near-field communities and regional air pollution concentrations. The WBEA network recorded 188 fire-related exceedances of 1-hr and 24-hr Alberta Ambient Air Quality Objectives. Sample mass reconstruction and fire specific emission profiles are presented and discussed. Potential fire-related photometric ozone instrument positive interferences were observed and were positively correlated with NO and NMHC.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: The impact of the 2016 Fort McMurray Horse River Wildfire on ambient air pollution levels in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region, Alberta, Canada
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