Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team

Predicting Regional Haze from Wildland Fire

Visibility impairment from regional haze is a significant problem throughout the continental United States.  A substantial portion of regional haze is produced by smoke from wildland fires.  FERA is collaborating with the AirFire team on work supported by the National Fire Plan and the EPA STAR program to predict future air quality across the western United States in the context of climate change and its effects on fire regimes.  Within this broad research agenda, we focus on the effects of wildfires on visibility in Class 1 airsheds (wilderness, national parks, and other federally protected areas). 

Our modeling system has two components, a Fire Scenario Builder, which simulates fire occurrence and fire sizes, and a consumption, emissions, and dispersion module, which uses the BlueSky framework and a national-scale map of fuel loadings derived from the Fuel Characteristic Classification System.

McKenzie, Donald; O'Neill, Susan M.; Larkin, Narasimhan K.; Norheim, Robert A. 2006. Integrating models to predict regional haze from wildland fire. Ecological Modelling. 199(2006): 278-288.

Team Lead: Don McKenzie

Funding provided by the National Fire Plan.