Monday, 17 November 2003
Application of the BlueSky Smoke Modeling Framework to the Rex Creek Wildfire
Rex Creek, located on the northwest shore of Lake Chelan on the east side of the Cascade Mountain Range, was the site of Eastern Washington’s largest fire in the summer of 2001. Ignited by lightning, the wildfire burned a total of 54,298 acres and exposed the communities of Twisp and Chelan to 24-hr average PM2.5 concentrations of 100-400 micrograms/m^3 over a five day period. Currently a wildfire case study analysis of the Rex Creek Wildfire is being preformed to predict the particulate matter concentrations produced by the fire. This wildfire case study analysis is being carried out by implementing the BlueSky smoke-modeling framework. BlueSky is a modeling framework used to predict cumulative impacts of smoke from agriculture, forest, and rangeland fires by linking together data and models of fuel consumption, emissions, meteorology, and smoke dispersion. Results from the BlueSky smoke-modeling framework for the Rex Creek Wildfire, and verification of the output will be presented to illustrate the accuracies and inaccuracies of the system. The usefulness of applying BlueSky to wildfires will be highlighted.
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