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Abstract

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 (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.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Price, OF and Purdam, PJ and Williamson, GJ and Bowman, DMJS
Keywords:	smoke, particulates, landscape fire, radar
Journal or Publication Title:	International Journal of Wildland Fire
Publisher:	C S I R O Publishing
ISSN:	1049-8001
DOI / ID Number:	https://doi.org/10.1071/WF17166
Copyright Information:	Copyright 2018 IAWF
Related URLs:	Google Scholar: Williamson, GJ UTAS Profile: Williamson, GJ Google Scholar: Bowman, DMJS UTAS Profile: Bowman, DMJS
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