Abstract
The rate and magnitude of emissions from prescribed burns and wildfires in wildland areas throughout the world are related to biomass consumption, which is controlled by total biomass, fuel moisture, fuel distribution (fuel size and arrangement), and ignition pattern. Consequently, landuse practices, which can affect many of these components, play a crucial role in determining the rate and magnitude of smoke production from biomass burning. The variability of landuse and its relation to the magnitude and rate of smoke production, however, usually are not considered when estimating biomass emissions. For example, much prescribed wildland burning in the United States has changed from high-intensity slash burning associated with land clearing activities, in which 20 hectare fires typically emit more than 10,000 grams/second of particles within an hour or two, to low-intensity understory burning related to health management where 120 hectare fires emit less than 2,000 grams/second of particles for several hours to days. Total emissions may be similar but the duration of emissions and associated heat release rates are significantly different, causing vastly different impacts on visibility, human health, and climatic forcing. Despite changes in landuse and fire, many regional and global estimates of biomass emissions in the United States continue to assume that most emissions result from land-clearing type slash burns.
Meanwhile, in South America estimates of biomass emissions typically assume dry fuels, yet most burning occurs within a few months of harvesting. The large logs remain wet, reducing emissions by more than 50%, which is unaccounted for in global emission estimates. Also, while land-clearing remains vigorous in the tropics, a change toward using fire for health management already has begun.
In this paper, an emission production model is used to show the differences in emission magnitudes and rates for prescribed fires in rain forests of Washington State and the Brazilian Amazon, and in dry forests of Oregon State and the Brazilian cerrado. In addition to emissions of particles and carbon gases, the model estimates heat release rates that affect plume buoyancy. These values are used to evaluate impacts on human health, visibility, and components of climate forcing.
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Ferguson, S.A., Sandberg, D.V., Ottmar, R. (2000). Modelling the Effect of Landuse Changes on Global Biomass Emissions. In: Innes, J.L., Beniston, M., Verstraete, M.M. (eds) Biomass Burning and Its Inter-Relationships with the Climate System. Advances in Global Change Research, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47959-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-47959-1_3
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