Daily Smoke Coordination Conference Call:

Redding and Riverside Predictive Services co-host a Conference call at 1300 local time.

Dial: 1-877-874-5440 Passcode: 357238

• These calls are held daily from spring burning season through the fall burning season, and as needed in winter.

• Participants include CARB, the Air districts, burners, and GACC meteorologists from the 2 Predictive Services Units.

• These have proven to be an excellent forum to discuss ongoing burns, new burns planned, air quality issues, marginal burn days, fuel loadings, etc.

• Serves as a clearinghouse for information

• Naturally Ignited Fires

• Educational Portal

• Establishes Relationships

• Strengthens agencies commitments to cooperate and makes for a more efficient smoke management program

Daily Smoke Management Call/Information Transfer Process

Tools Available Tools Available

More questions are being asked of everyone!

•How much? •When? •Where? •How to respond? •What level of response? •Who responds? •What can be done? •Messaging? •Why respond?

• Multiple tools in one place; all on the web• Multi-criterion assessments• http://firesmoke.us

Wildland Fire Decision Support System

V-024 “Lack of Comprehensive Air Quality Information”

Recommendations:

Real time smoke/PM2.5 monitoring: At least 3 additional BAMs and 3 EBAMs are needed. Could develop an interagency collaborative plan, which may include Tahoe Basin researchers, to support and implement a comprehensive monitoring network in the basin.

Web Cams: A review of existing web cam coverage in the basin with a plan to develop and supplement the existing government and commercial network to gain adequate coverage.

Smoke modeling via BlueSky / CANSAC: Recommend the California and Nevada Smoke and Air Committee (CANSAC) evaluate the specific needs associated with providing the Lake Tahoe Basin with BlueSky smoke modeling and MM5 weather forecasts with a special high resolution domain for the Basin.

Prescribed Fire Information Reporting System (PFIRS): The Prescribed Fire Information Reporting System (PFIRS) is under the management of the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Nevada has agreed to use PFIRS on a trial basis for evaluation purposes. To fully benefit PFIRS and Blue Sky capabilities, PFIRS data will be linked to Blue Sky products.

Combining Satellite and Ground-Based Information

June 13, 2008

Figure courtesy, A. Huff

Fuel Loadings Estimated from MODIS Vegetation Properties (1KM)

(a) Forest foliage(b) forest branch (c) shrub(d)grass (e) litter(f) coarse woody

detritus

Air Quality Predictions

INTENSITY OF AQ IMPACTS

• MAGNITUDE AND DURATION– Some fires were associated with very few “moderate” exceedances

over a long time period, some “large magnitude” exceedances over a very short time.

• Duration of all events with over 50% intensity was under 100 hrs (~ 4 days)

• Proximity of monitor to the fire contributes to this intensity…basically the “very unhealthy” and “unhealthy” events at 100% intensity mean you are in the plume)