Environmental Conditions, Ignition Type, and Air Quality Impacts of Wildfires in the Southeastern and Western United States.

ABSTRACT: This research contrasts the environmental conditions, meteorological drivers, and air quality impacts of human- and lightning-ignited wildfires in the southeastern and western United States, the two continental U.S. regions with the most wildfire burn area. We use the Fire Program Analysis Wildfire Occurrence Data (FPA FOD) to determine wildfire abundance and ignition sources between 1992 and 2015. We investigate specific ecoregions within these two U.S. regions and find that in the majority of ecoregions, annual lightning- and human-ignited wildfire burn area have similar relationships with key meteorological parameters. We investigate the fuel moisture values where wildfires occur segregated by ignition type and show that within a given ecoregion, the differences in median fuel moisture

SUBMITTER: Brey SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6472659 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature