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Displaying 81 - 100 of 287

Radiological release incidents can potentially contaminate widespread areas with radioactive materials and decontamination efforts are typically focused on populated areas, which means radionuclides may be left in forested areas for long periods of…
Author(s): Kirk R. Baker, Sang Don Lee, Paul Lemieux, Scott Hudson, Benjamin N. Murphy, Jesse O. Bash, Shannon N. Koplitz, Thien Khoi V Nguyen, Wei Min Hao, Stephen P. Baker, Emily Lincoln
Year Published:

Climate change and human activities have drastically altered the natural wildfire balance in the Western US and increased population health risks due to exposure to pollutants from fire smoke. Using dynamically downscaled climate model projections,…
Author(s): Jennifer D. Stowell, Cheng-En Yang, Joshua S. Fu, Noah Scovronick, Matthew J. Strickland, Yang Liu
Year Published:

The public health emergency associated with the 2019–20 bushfires in Australia was a wake-up call to increase the resilience of our health systems to respond to climate extremes. We must combine our understanding of predictions of extreme weather…
Author(s): Aparna Lal, Mahomed Patel, Arnagretta Hunter, Christine Phillips
Year Published:

It is difficult to detect forest fires in complex backgrounds owing to the many interfering factors in forest fire smoke. In this paper, a novel method that combines Time Domain Robust Principal Component Analysis (TRPCA) and a Two-Stream Composed…
Author(s): Xiaohu Qiang, Guoxiong Zhou, Aibin Chen, Xin Zhang, Wenzhuo Zhang
Year Published:

Wildland fire activity and associated emission of particulate matter air pollution is increasing in the United States over the last two decades due primarily to a combination of increased temperature, drought, and historically high forest fuel…
Author(s): Jonathan Krug, Russell W. Long, Maribel Colón, Andrew Habel, Shawn P. Urbanski, Matthew S. Landis
Year Published:

Wildland firefighters are repeatedly exposed to elevated levels of wildland fire smoke (WFS) while protecting lives and properties from wildland fires. Studies reporting personal exposure concentrations of air pollutants in WFS during fire…
Author(s): Chieh-Ming Wu, Chi Song, Ryan Chartier, Jacob Kremer, Luke P. Naeher, Olorunfemi Adetona
Year Published:

Violent fire-driven convection can manifest as towering pyrocumulus (pyroCu) or pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) clouds, which can have devastating impacts on the environment and society. Their associated fire spread is erratic, unpredictable and not…
Author(s): Rachel Badlan, J. Sharples, Jason P. Evans, Richard H. D. McRae
Year Published:

wo years ago, the crew of the Po- larstern, a German icebreaker frozen into Arctic sea ice, shot a green laser up into the night. The beam’s reflected light was meant to help researchers study icy winter clouds. Instead, the beam encountered…
Author(s): Paul Voosen
Year Published:

The fire plume height (smoke injection height) is an important parameter for calculating the transport and lifetime of smoke particles, which can significantly affect regional and global air quality and atmospheric radiation budget. To develop an…
Author(s): Ziming Ke, Yuhang Wang, Yufei Zou, Yongjia Song, Yongqiang Liu
Year Published:

Wildfires are increasing in frequency, size, and intensity, and increasingly affect highly populated areas. Wildfire smoke impacts cardiorespiratory health; children are at increased risk due to smaller airways, a higher metabolic rate and ongoing…
Author(s): Shelby Henry, Maria B. Ospina, Liz Dennett, Anne Hicks
Year Published:

Large areal fires, such as those ignited following a nuclear detonation, can inject smoke into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. Detailed fire simulations allow for assessment of how local weather interacts with these fires and affects…
Author(s): Stephanie Redfern, Julie Lundquist, Owen B. Toon, Domingo Muñoz-Esparza, Charles G. Bardeen
Year Published:

Smouldering peat fires are reported across continents and their emissions result in regional haze crisis (large scale accumulation of smoke at low altitudes) and large carbon foot prints. Inorganic content (IC) and bulk density vary naturally in…
Author(s): Yuqi Hu, Wuquan Cui, Guillermo Rein
Year Published:

Wildland firefighters are exposed to health hazards including inhaling hazardous pollutants from the combustion of live and dead vegetation (smoke) and breathe soil dust, while working long shifts with no respiratory protection. This research brief…
Author(s): Kathleen M. Navarro, Linda Mutch
Year Published:

Prescribed fire can result in significant benefits to ecosystems and society. Examples include improved wildlife habitat, enhanced biodiversity, reduced threat of destructive wildfire, and enhanced ecosystem resilience. Prescribed fire can also come…
Author(s): Molly E. Hunter, Marcos D. Robles
Year Published:

The Lion Fire 2011 (LF11) and Lion Fire 2017 (LF17) were similar in size, location, and smoke transport. The same locations were used to monitor both fires for ground level fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Ground level PM2.5 is used to determine the…
Author(s): Don Schweizer, Ricardo Cisneros, Kathleen M. Navarro
Year Published:

Particularly in rural settings, there has been little research regarding the health impacts of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) during the wildfire season smoke exposure period on respiratory diseases, such as influenza, and their associated…
Author(s): Erin L. Landguth, Zachary A. Holden, Jonathan M. Graham, Benjamin Stark, Elham Bayat Mokhtari, Emily Kaleczyc, Stacey Anderson, Shawn P. Urbanski, William Matt Jolly, Erin O. Semmens, Dyer A. Warren, Alan Swanson, Emily Stone, Curtis W. Noonan
Year Published:

Characterizing pre- and post-fire fuels remains a key challenge for estimating biomass consumption and carbon emissions from wildfires. Airborne laser scanning (ALS) data have demonstrated effectiveness for estimating canopy, and to a lesser degree…
Author(s): T. Ryan McCarley, Andrew T. Hudak, Aaron M. Sparks, Nicole M. Vaillant, Arjan J. H. Meddens, Laura Trader, Francisco Mauro, Jason Kreitler, Luigi Boschetti
Year Published:

As we enter the wildfire season in the northern hemisphere, the potential for a dangerous interaction between SARS-CoV-2 and smoke pollution should be recognized and acknowledged. This is challenging because the public health threat of COVID-19 is…
Author(s): Sarah B. Henderson
Year Published:

Central to public health risk communication is understanding the perspectives and shared values among individuals who need the information. Using the responses from a Smoke Sense citizen science project, we examined perspectives on the issue of…
Author(s): Mary Clare Hano, Steven E. Prince, Linda Wei, Bryan Hubbell, Ana G. Rappold
Year Published:

With increasing heat and droughts world-wide, wildfires are becoming a more serious global threat to the world’s population. Wildfire smoke is composed of approximately 80% to 90% of fine (<2.5 um) and ultrafine (<1 um) particulate matter (PM…
Author(s): Mary M. Prunicki, Christopher C. Dant, Shu Cao, Holden Maecker, Francois Haddad, Juyong Brian Kim, Michael Snyder, Joseph Wu, Kari Nadeau
Year Published: