Characterization of Emissions and Air Quality Modeling for Predicting the Impacts of Prescribed Burns at DoD Lands.

摘要

Objectives: Prescribed burning (PB) is an effective and economical land management tool for maintaining fire-adapted ecosystems, reducing wildfire risk, and improving training realism at Department of Defense (DoD) facilities. Pollutants emitted from prescribed fires, however, may be transported downwind, mix with emissions from other sources, form other pollutants, and contribute to poor air quality of urban areas in the region. As a result, compliance with ambient air quality standards in urban areas proximal to DoD prescribed burning activities may require tougher restrictions on DoD's air emissions in the future. Because the alternatives to PB are costly and may have undesired ecological impacts, it is important for DoD to be able to control the emissions from its PB operations and to minimize their air quality impacts. Therefore, it is necessary to better characterize PB emissions and to more accurately predict their air quality impacts. This project aimed to improve the characterization of PB emissions by collecting field data most relevant to the modeling of PB plumes and developing a simulation framework that can accurately predict the impacts of prescribed burns on regional air quality. The objectives were to (1) better characterize the fuel types and loads for the sites to be studied; (2) estimate accurately the emissions from the burns to be simulated; (3) develop an air quality modeling system with sufficient resolution to characterize PB plumes, track their regional transport and chemistry, and discern their impacts from other pollution sources; (4) identify the data needs for model evaluation, collect new data, and evaluate the models; (5) consider the effects of inherent uncertainties in model inputs on model results; (6) and simulate the regional air quality impacts of DoD PB operations in the Southeast and assess alternative burning strategies.