Development of a Hybrid-Receptor Model for Characterizing Air Quality Impacts from Wildland Fire Particulate Matter Emmissions
Project ID: J8W07090024
Federal Agency: National Park Service
Partner Institution: University of Washington
Fiscal Year: 2009
Initial Funding: $178,208
Total Funding: $178,208
Project Type: Technical Assistance
Project Disciplines: Physical
National Park: National Projects
Principal Investigator: Larson, Timothy
Agreement Technical Representative: Schichtel, Bret
Abstract: Smoke from fire emissions can be a significant contributor to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and haze. In order to meet air quality regulations, state and federal regulators are beginning to explore reducing the impacts from smoke. To develop meaningful control strategies, federal land managers and policymakers need retrospective tools to apportion daily measurements of PM2.5 to smoke from natural (e.g., wildfire) and anthropogenic (or prescribed) fires, as well as mobile and industrial sources. Traditionally, source attribution is conducted using chemical transport models (CTM) or receptor models. However, a new hybrid-receptor model has been developed that incorporates CTM results into the receptor modeling framework, and it has been shown to reduce errors from CTM or receptor models alone. In this project we propose to further develop and refine the hybrid-receptor apportionment model. This will involve incorporating additional a priori information, providing estimates of the uncertainties of the final source apportionment results, and optimizing the model to apportion the smoke to fire types and states. The model will explicitly incorporate source profile for biomass burning secondary organic aerosols (SOA), and a priori source attribution results will be developed using a new simplified CTM capable of estimating the contributions from various source types. The model will also be generalized to estimate contributions from specific source regions. In addition, synthetic datasets will be developed to test, evaluate and validate the hybrid model. The evaluated hybrid-receptor model will be transferred to the National Park Service for use in air quality assessments.
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