A Compendium of Brief Summaries of Smoke Science Research In Support of the Joint Fire Science Program Smoke Science Plan

Introduction --- The Smoke Science Plan (SSP) and Brief Project Summaries
During the course of the Joint Fire Program Smoke Science Plan’s five-year duration, 41 research projects came under its umbrella. Each of these projects whether funded under the plan or funded before it began, were managed to further the four themes of the plan and each theme’s objectives. The SSP themes and their objectives are:
• The objective of the Smoke Emissions Inventory Research Theme is to develop science and knowledge needed to improve national wildland fire emissions inventories, paving the way for the design of a national consensus inventory system.
• The objective of the Fire and Smoke Model Validation Theme is to identify the scientific scope, techniques and partnerships needed to objectively validate smoke and fire models using field data.
• The objectives of the Populations and Smoke Theme are to quantify the impact of wildland fire smoke on population centers and on fire fighters, and to elucidate the mechanisms of public smoke acceptance in light of the needed balance between human smoke exposure risk and ecosystem health risk. Ultimately this is envisioned to help in the development of a national smoke hazard warning system/methodology based on best science.
• The objectives of the Smoke and Climate Change Theme are to better understand implications of climate change on wildland fire smoke and of wildland fire smoke on climate change using UN IPCC future climate scenarios for guidance (IPCC, 2013).

In this document readers will find concise summary statements for each of the projects under the SSP. These statements were prepared for the JFSP for use in guiding the program’s ‘smoke line of work’ or smoke research portfolio. They are not inclusive of everything that might be reported about each of the research projects, but they do provide the reader with a concise place to begin determining what research has been done and more importantly, what results may address their needs. This compendium of brief summaries is arranged by JFSP SSP theme. All are either summaries of project final reports (where available) or summaries of responses submitted (March 2017) by project principal investigators. All JFSP project final reports can be found at WWW.FIRESCIENCE.GOV.