Smoke pollution from landscape fires is a major health issue. Prescribed burning aims to reduce the area and impact of wildfire, but itself produces smoke pollution. This raises the question as to whether the smoke production and transport from prescribed fires is substantially different compared to wildfires. We examined the maximum height, width and areal footprint of large-particle plumes from 97 wild and 126 prescribed fires in south-eastern Australia using the existing network of weather radars. Radar detects large particles in smoke (probably those >100 mm) and hence is an imperfect proxy for microfine (<2 mm) particles that are known to affect human health. Of the 223 landscape fires, ˜45% of plumes were detected, with the probability being >0.8 for large fires (>100 000 ha) regardless of type, closer than 50 km from the radar. Plume height was strongly influenced by fire area, the height of the planetary boundary layer and fire type. Plume heights differed between wildfire (range 1016–12 206 m, median 3260 m) and prescribed fires (range 706–6397 m, median 1669 m), and prescribed fires were predicted to be 800–1200 m lower than wildfires, controlling for other factors. For both wildfires and prescribed fires, the maximum plume footprint was always near the ground.
History
Publication title
International Journal of Wildland Fire
Volume
27
Issue
8
Pagination
525-537
ISSN
1049-8001
Department/School
School of Natural Sciences
Publisher
CSIRO Publishing
Place of publication
150 Oxford St, Po Box 1139, Collingwood, Australia, Victoria, 3066
Rights statement
Copyright 2018 IAWF
Repository Status
Restricted
Socio-economic Objectives
Public health (excl. specific population health) not elsewhere classified