Air quality and health impacts from prescribed bBurns in the Eastern US

Planned burns produce varying outcomes in the Eastern United States. Credit: NOAA

Apart from wildfires, air quality and health challenges are also created by planned burns in grasslands, shrublands, and farmland. Few studies have investigated how different crops or plant types may contribute to air pollution when burned. The Climate Program Office’s Atmospheric Chemistry, Carbon Cycle and Climate (AC4) Program supported a new study that looks into emissions of many pollutants across different plant types and crop residues after harvest season. AC4-funded scientists Robert Yokelson of the University of Montana and Glenn Wolfe of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center worked with a large, international team of researchers to study the impacts of these planned fires in the Eastern US. This research project was part of an AC4 initiative to use data from the joint NOAA- and NASA-led FIREX-AQ (Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality 2019) field campaigns. The growing body of work from this initiative has improved the research community’s ability to predict fire and smoke impacts.