Project Abstract
Use of prescribed fire is an important forest management activity in the southern region with ~2,000,000 acres burned in 17,733 prescribed fires during the first 10 months of 2003 and an additional ~255,000 acres burned by 14,359 wildfires. Fire is used to remove logging slash prior to plantation establishment, reduce hardwood and herbaceous competition in young stands, improve habitat for threatened and endangered species, and to minimize a catastrophic wildfire hazard by fuel reduction. Burning activity is projected to increase as managers on federal, private, and industrial lands seek to reduce dry fuel accumulation and minimize wildfire dangers, especially in the Coastal Plain of North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Isabel in October 2003. Land managers using prescribed burns for silviculture and ecosystem management do so while recognizing and planning for the liabilities of smoke, human health effects, and the danger of prescribed burns igniting wildfires and organic soil ground fires. Near ground smoke poses a risk to public safety by reducing visibility on roadways; increases human health risks from exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) and ozone precursors; and increases the public's perception that prescribed burning is deleterious to their families and community at the wildland/urban interface. The proposed research will provide fire management tools to land managers that integrate fuel loading, fire emissions, and smoke plume measurements and modeling. The objectives are to (1) Inventory, map, and model live and down woody debris/fuels biomass utilizing USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis P2 and P3 field plot protocols, develop fuel loading formulas for fire behavior models in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge and the Air Force Dare County Bombing Range in the North Carolina Coastal Plain, and incorporate data from Coastal Plain forest types into the fuel characteristic classification (FCC) system and the FARSITE fire behavior model; (2) Validate the USDA Forest Service PB-Coastal Plain smoke model, the BlueSky smoke prediction system, and the BlueSky Rapid Access Information System (BlueSkyRAINS) for the near-coastal land-water interface, including differences in vegetative land use; (3) Characterize photochemically active and radiatively important trace gases as well as PM emissions from prescribed burns in Coastal Plain forest types and histosol soils, and (4) Deliver personal computer and web-based decision support tools for estimating inputs of live biomass and down woody debris/fuels into a fire behavior model, real-time smoke plume models, and an emissions model for prescribed burns for use by federal and state land managers in North Carolina specifically, and other users throughout the Coastal Plain of the southeastern US.