Smoke Management

The particulate matter (or particles) produced from wildland and prescribed fires can be a nuisance or safety hazard to people who come in contact with the smoke – whether the contact is directly through personal exposure, or indirectly through visibility impairment. Reduced visibility from smoke has caused fatal collisions on highways in several states.  In the South in particular, meteorology, climate and topography combine with population density and fire frequency to make nuisance smoke a chronic issue. Because of public and governmental concerns about these possible risks to public health and safety, as well as nuisance and regional haze impacts of smoke, increasingly effective smoke management programs have developed over the past decade. 

This section of the encyclopedia, excerpted from the "Smoke Management Guide for Prescribed and Wildland Fire, 2001 Edition" (Hardy et al. 2001), provides a discussion on various aspects of smoke management.

• The Need for Smoke Management. In the past, smoke from prescribed burning was managed primarily to avoid nuisance conditions objectionable to the public or to avoid traffic hazards caused by smoke drift across roadways. While these objectives are still valid, today’s smoke management programs are also likely to be driven, in part, by local, regional and federal air quality regulations.
• Problem and Nuisance Smoke. This section provides information on the issue of visibility reduction from wildland fire smoke, and focuses particularly on smoke as a major concern in the Southern states. Meteorology, climate and topography combine with population density and fire frequency to make nuisance smoke a chronic issue in the South. This section also briefly summarizes tools currently used or under development to aid the land manager in reducing the problematic effects of smoke.
• Smoke Management Meteorology. Managing smoke in ways that prevent serious impact to sensitive areas from single burns or multiple burns occurring simultaneously requires knowledge of the weather conditions that will affect smoke emissions, trajectories, and dispersion.
• Techniques to Reduce or Redistribute Emissions. Prescribed burning programs across the nation use both emission reduction methods and smoke management techniques (avoidance and dilution) to minimize the impacts of smoke on air quality as well as concerns about public exposure to smoke.
• Smoke Management Programs.  The purposes of smoke management programs are to mitigate the nuisance and public safety hazards posed by smoke intrusions into populated areas; to prevent significant deterioration of air quality and NAAQS violations; and to address visibility impacts in Class I areas. The complexity of these programs varies greatly from state to state.
• Smoke Management Program Administration and Evaluation. The administration of smoke management programs allows for a number of different approaches to meet EPA objectives and to maintain cooperative and interactive efforts to manage the dual objectives of good air quality and land stewardship.