1FIREWX Flint Hills Prescribed Burn Decision Support

During the spring months in the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas, ranchers and land managers conduct prescribed fires on the native grasslands, a practice that dates back to Native Americans settlements centuries ago. The primary objectives of prescribed fires include removal of dead and invasive vegetation, limiting wildfire intensity, and allowing new, more nutrient-rich vegetation to grow. Often within weeks of the prescribed fire being conducted, cattle consume these new, nutrient-rich grasses, resulting in enhanced livestock performance for ranchers.

One downside to the Flint Hills spring burning season is smoke impacts to local and regional air quality. To help ranchers and land managers mitigate air quality impacts in populated areas surrounding the Flint Hills, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) commissioned Sonoma Technology to develop and host a smoke model and decision support website that provides daily dispersion model predictions of county-based smoke impacts from potential fires. Ranchers and land managers can refer to a color-coded map that displays the potential smoke impact of burning specific to their area on surrounding urban air quality. They can also enter initial fire conditions and view model animations that show where resultant smoke from potential fires at their location would be transported. Along with the smoke dispersion model output, the website also contains a daily forecast discussion provided by Sonoma Technology air quality meteorologists, which includes a summary of expected meteorological conditions, smoke transport patterns, and communities that may have smoke impacts over the next 72 hours.

In this presentation, Sonoma Technology will provide an overview of the operational framework for the KDHE Flint Hills smoke dispersion model and highlight how model output informs Sonoma Technology's daily prescribed burn decision support for KDHE during spring. In addition, we will also provide a demonstration of how the model operates.