Basics of the WFDSS-AQ Portal

New to the WFDSS-AQ Portal?  Welcome!  Following are some introductory remarks that (hopefully) will help you get started. 

Please let us know how to improve these remarks so subsequent users can learn from your experience. 

What's the goal of the WFDSS-AQ Portal?

To enable the use of air quality information in wildland fire management decisions by making it more easily accessible and understandable.

WFDSS-AQ is built to connect WFDSS with the variety of air quality tools that are currently available with national coverage (CONUS). 

What about Alaska?  Unfortunately, many tools are not available for Alaska at this point.  We are actively working to port several of the tools to Alaska, but these are unlikely to be available in 2010.   Hawaii?  Currently we do not have funding to port tools to Hawaii. 

WFDSS-AQ is designed to transfer information from WFDSS to these air quality tools to avoid the need for duplicate entry of information and to better focus the results of the tools.  In many cases this requires recoding of the air quality tools to accept the information (input) from the WFDSS-AQ page.  As a first step, we are providing fire location information to the AQ tools.  (For some tools this connection is still being developed.)  In the future, we hope to be able to both transfer additional information (for example size of the fire, fuel loadings, etc.), and to provide "one-click" links from within WFDSS whenever possible.

What types of information are available?

Wide variety of output variables.  There are many different types of information available through the tools that are included in the portal.  These include purely atmospheric information (e.g. winds, mixing height, ventilation index, stability indices), as well as fire information (locations, fuel loading, consumption, emissions), and smoke impact information (smoke trajectories, ground concentrations).  Each component provides data that helps form a larger picture that encompasses how the fire is interacting with the atmosphere and where and how the smoke is likely to go. 

Historic, current, and forecast information.  While the need for forecast and current information is straightforward, we also include tools that present historical, climatological data that can be used for strategic and long-range planning.

Model output and observational data.  Some of the tools, particularly the forecast tools, rely on models for their information.  Others rely solely on observational data. 

What types of decisions is this useful for?

The types of atmospheric, fire emissions, smoke, and air quality information gathered for WFDSS-AQ can be useful for:

• Planning a prescribed burn;
• Go/no-go decisions on a prescribed burn or burnout;
• Understanding the current and future smoke impacts of a fire for communication with the public;
• Prioritizing between different management decisions based on likely smoke impacts;
• Working with public health and air quality agencies to discuss or mitigate impacts;
  
• Working on NAAQS exceedance documentation;
  
• Quantifying greenhouse gas emissions; and
  
• more...

Part of the goal of providing fire and smoke information in a centralized place at the WFDSS-AQ Portal is that novel uses for the information will be found, which will be to the benefit of land managers, fire managers, the public, and the ecosystem.

Do you have an example of using any of these tools to make a decision?  We are actively seeking your story in an effort to provide a set of collected examples from which others can learn.  Please email us:  wfdss.aq@gmail.com