Wildland Fire in Ecosystems Effects of Fire on Air

This state-of-knowledge review about the effects of fire on air quality can assist land, fire, and air resource managers with fire and smoke planning, and their efforts to explain to others the science behind fire-related program policies and practices to improve air quality. Chapter topics include air quality regulations and fire; characterization of emissions from fire; the transport, dispersion, and modeling of fire emissions; atmospheric and plume chemistry; air quality impacts of fire; social consequences of air quality impacts; and recommendations for future research

STEREO PHOTO SERIES FOR QUANTIFYING BIOMASS FOR THE CERRADO VEGETATION IN CENTRAL BRAZIL

As séries de estereo-fotografias para o Cerrado representam uma variação de formas fisionômicas do Cerrado, incluindo campo limpo, campo sujo, cerrado ralo, cerrado sensu stricto e cerrado denso. As áreas incluem fotografias grande angular e um par de estereo-fotografias complementadas com informações sobre o combustível vivo e morto, a estrutura e composição da vegetação. Estas séries de estereo-fotografias são uma importante ferramenta de manejo, que pode ser usada na avaliação de paisagens através da estimativa do combustível vivo e morto, bem como da estrutura da vegetação. Dados de inventário como os fornecidos nestas séries podem ser usados como variáveis para, por exemplo, a avaliação de habitats de animais e insetos, ciclagem de nutrients, microclima e estimativas de seqüestro de carbono . Aqueles que trabalham com pesquisas em fogo encontrarão dados importantes para a predição de consumo de combustível, produção de fumaça e efeitos do fogo durante incêndios florestais e queimadas prescritas

Integrated Active Fire Retrievals and Biomass Burning Emissions Using Complementary Near-Coincident Ground, Airborne and Spaceborne Sensor Data

Ground, airborne and spaceborne data were collected for a 450 ha prescribed fire implemented on 18 October 2011 at the Henry W. Coe State Park in California. The integration of various data elements allowed near coincident active fire retrievals to be estimated. The Autonomous Modular Sensor-Wildfire (AMS) airborne multispectral imaging system was used as a bridge between ground and spaceborne data sets providing high quality reference information to support satellite fire retrieval error analyses and fire emissions estimates. We found excellent agreement between peak fire radiant heat flux data (less than 1% error) derived from near-coincident ground radiometers and AMS. Both MODIS and GOES imager active fire products were negatively influenced by the presence of thick smoke, which was misclassified as cloud by their algorithms, leading to the omission of fire pixels beneath the smoke, and resulting in the underestimation of their retrieved fire radiative power (FRP) values for the burn plot, compared to the reference airborne data. Agreement between airborne and spaceborne FRP data improved significantly after correction for omission errors and atmospheric attenuation, resulting in as low as 5 difference between AquaMODIS and AMS. Use of in situ fuel and fire energy estimates in combination with a collection of AMS, MODIS, and GOES FRP retrievals provided a fuel consumption factor of 0.261 kg per MJ, total energy release of 14.5 x 10(exp 6) MJ, and total fuel consumption of 3.8 x 10(exp 6) kg. Fire emissions were calculated using two separate techniques, resulting in as low as 15 difference for various specie

Threat captures attention, but not automatically: Top-down goals modulate attentional orienting to threat distractors

The rapid orienting of attention to potential threats has been proposed to proceed outside of top-down control. However, paradigms that have been used to investigate this have struggled to separate the rapid orienting of attention (i.e. capture) from the later disengagement of focal attention that may be subject to top-down control. Consequently, it remains unclear whether and to what extent orienting to threat is contingent on top-down goals. The current study manipulated the goal-relevance of threat distractors (spiders), whilst a strict top-down attentional set was encouraged by presenting the saliently colored target and the threat distracter simultaneously for a limited time. The goal-relevance of threatening distractors was manipulated by including a spider amongst the possible target stimuli (Experiment 1: spider/cat targets) or excluding it (Experiment 2: bird/fish targets). Orienting and disengagement were disentangled by cueing attention away from or towards the threat prior to its onset. The results indicated that the threatening spider distractors elicited rapid orienting of attention when spiders were potentially goal-relevant (Experiment 1) but did so much less when they were irrelevant to the task goal (Experiment 2). Delayed disengagement from the threat distractors was even more strongly contingent on the task goal and occurred only when a spider was a possible target. These results highlight the role of top-down goals in attentional orienting to and disengagement from threat. © 2016 The Psychonomic Society, Inc

DIGITAL PHOTO SERIES (Natural Fuels Photo Series)

The Digital Photo Series (DPS) is a web-based application that provides access to the Natural Fuels Photo Series database and photographs. The DPS works through a user’s internet browser, but has also been designed to work as a stand-alone application when the computer is disconnected from the internet. A user-friendly interface allows users to browse, query, and download photo series data and high-quality photographs. The Digital Photo Series is intended to complement, not replace, the printed photo series volumes

National database for calculating fuel available to wildfires

In recent years, wildfires have emerged as an important part of the global environment. Carbon released from fires during combustion alters the global carbon balance. Smoke emissions are a health hazard to nearby communities [Wegesser et al., 2009], can impair air quality and visibility for hundreds of kilometers downwind (Interagency Modeling of Protected Visual Environments;http://vista.cira.colostate.edu/improve/Data/IMPROVE/improve_data.htm , 2004), and contribute substantially to the global aerosol budget [van der Werf et al., 2006]. As understanding about fire as a global ecosystem process improves [Bowman et al., 2009] and as more and more global fire databases are being built [Giglio et al., 2009], wildfires are increasingly emerging as an important component of Earth system models, particularly those that involve emissions from fires and their effects on climate