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Western Governors Association - 2018 Fire Emissions Inventory

Air Sciences, working with the Fire Emissions Joint Forum of the Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP) of the WGA, developed and executed the methodology to temporally and spatially distribute aggregated prescribed burning forecasts on wildlands and agricultural lands for the 13-state region of the WRAP. Aggregated (seasonal, 50 km grid) fire activity data for 2018 was disaggregated into a realistic distribution by day, location (latitude/longitude) and fire size based on a combination of empirical fire data and estimated burn schedules. The separate tasks of spatial data acquisition, fuel loading estimation, emission calculations, and inventory mapping and reporting were integrated into a single GIS-based model. Deliverables for this project included a peer-reviewed report summarizing methodology and findings and digital files formatted specifically for the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernal Emissions (SMOKE) Modeling System, an emissions processing system. Ultimately, the emissions inventories developed for this project were used by the WRAP in its Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling analyses for regional haze.

The animated GIF file below presents types of data pertaining to the modeled forecasts of PM2.5 emissions from fire sources. Total PM2.5 emissions (left hand bar chart), spatial distribution of emissions (map and key), and the relative contributions to total emissions from prescribed fire ("Rx"), wildfire ("Wild"), and agricultural burning ("Ag") (lower right bar chart) are presented for each month of the year 2018.