Prescribed Burns as a Tool to Mitigate Future Wildfire Smoke Exposure: Lessons for States and Rural Environmental Justice Communities

Details

• Journal Title:
  Earth's Future
• Personal Author:
  Kelp, Makoto M. ; Carroll, Matthew C. ; Liu, Tianjia ; Yantosca, Robert M. ; Hockenberry, Heath E. ; Mickley, Loretta J.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  NWS (National Weather Service)
• Description:
  Smoke from wildfires presents one of the greatest threats to air quality, public health, and ecosystems in the United States, especially in the West. Here we quantify the efficacy of prescribed burning as an intervention for mitigating smoke exposure downwind of wildfires across the West during the 2018 and 2020 fire seasons. Using the adjoint of the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model, we calculate the sensitivities of population-weighted smoke concentrations in receptor regions, including states and rural environmental justice communities, to fire emissions upwind of the receptors. We find that the population-weighted smoke exposure across the West during the September 2020 fires was 44 μg/m 3 but would have been 20%–30% greater
• Keywords:
  Earth And Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) General Environmental Science Earth And Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) Earth And Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous)
• Source:
  Earth's Future, 11(6)
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1029/2022ef003468
• ISSN:
  2328-4277 ; 2328-4277
• Format:
  PDF
• Publisher:
  American Geophysical Union (AGU)
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  Grant no. NA22OAR4310140
• License:
  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Rights Information:
  CC BY
• Compliance:
  Library
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:295725df6254073b0b696f9ae218d51b0430de828776867e1cc974ae5617824d2dad438212180d3343e4cf51ae3567a01f83f694257cd3ddab9393cad885e7ea
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/53637/noaa_53637_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.94 MB ]