Citation:

Holder, A., K. Boaggio, AND S. LeDuc. Ambient Monitoring and the Chemistry of Wildland Urban Interface Fires. 2022 National Ambient Air Monitoring Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, August 22 - 25, 2022.

Impact/Purpose:

This presentation provides an overview of the findings and recommendations from a National Academies Report on The Chemistry of Urban Wildfires. A special focus will be placed on the role of ambient monitoring for to address the major research gaps identified in the report.

Description:

Wildland fires are one of the largest sources of emissions to the atmosphere in the United States causing extended, and occasionally extreme, smoke episodes in many parts of the country. Wildland fires have increased in magnitude over the past decade, burning millions of acres of natural landscape each year. Over this same time, the number of communities that are adjacent to or intermixed among wildlands has increased. This intersection has led to the increase of fires in the wildland urban interface (WUI). These WUI fires can burn through entire communities consuming the structures and vehicles contained within them while producing smoke that may have very different chemical composition from other types of wildland fires. Although wildland fire smoke has been extensively studied, very little is known about the composition of smoke from WUI fires. The combustible materials in the urban environment likely differ greatly from the natural landscape and may impact both the combustion conditions and the emissions from these fires. The National Academies convened an expert committee to describe the state of knowledge of the chemistry of emissions from wildland fires that burn urban areas. This presentation will describe the major findings from the report developed by the committee and the recommendations for future research. This presentation will place a special focus on the role of ambient air monitoring in addressing some of the key research gaps related to the chemistry of WUI fire emissions.

Record Details: