Emission Factors for Crop Residue and Prescribed Fires in the Eastern US During FIREX-AQ

  • Katherine R. Travis
  • , James H. Crawford
  • , Amber J. Soja
  • , Emily M. Gargulinski
  • , Richard H. Moore
  • , Elizabeth B. Wiggins
  • , Glenn S. Diskin
  • , Joshua P. DiGangi
  • , John B. Nowak
  • , Hannah Halliday
  • , Robert J. Yokelson
  • , Jessica L. McCarty
  • , Isobel J. Simpson
  • , Donald R. Blake
  • , Simone Meinardi
  • , Rebecca S. Hornbrook
  • , Eric C. Apel
  • , Alan J. Hills
  • , Carsten Warneke
  • , Matthew M. Coggon
  • Andrew W. Rollins, Jessica B. Gilman, Caroline C. Womack, Michael A. Robinson, Joseph M. Katich, Jeff Peischl, Georgios I. Gkatzelis, Ilann Bourgeois, Pamela S. Rickly, Aaron Lamplugh, Jack E. Dibb, Jose L. Jimenez, Pedro Campuzano-Jost, Douglas A. Day, Hongyu Guo, Demetrios Pagonis, Paul O. Wennberg, John D. Crounse, Lu Xu, Thomas F. Hanisco, Glenn M. Wolfe, Jin Liao, Jason M. St. Clair, Benjamin A. Nault, Alan Fried, Anne E. Perring

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Agricultural and prescribed burning activities emit large amounts of trace gases and aerosols on regional to global scales. We present a compilation of emission factors (EFs) and emission ratios from the eastern portion of the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) campaign in 2019 in the United States, which sampled burning of crop residues and other prescribed fire fuels. FIREX-AQ provided comprehensive chemical characterization of 53 crop residue and 22 prescribed fires. Crop residues burned at different modified combustion efficiencies (MCE), with corn residue burning at higher MCE than other fuel types. Prescribed fires burned at lower MCE (<0.90) which is typical, while grasslands burned at lower MCE (0.90) than normally observed due to moist, green, growing season fuels. Most non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) were significantly anticorrelated with MCE except for ethanol and NMVOCs that were measured with less certainty. We identified 23 species where crop residue fires differed by more than 50% from prescribed fires at the same MCE. Crop residue EFs were greater for species related to agricultural chemical use and fuel composition as well as oxygenated NMVOCs possibly due to the presence of metals such as potassium. Prescribed EFs were greater for monoterpenes (5×). FIREX-AQ crop residue average EFs generally agreed with the previous agricultural fire study in the US but had large disagreements with global compilations. FIREX-AQ observations show the importance of regionally-specific and fuel-specific EFs as first steps to reduce uncertainty in modeling the air quality impacts of fire emissions.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere2023JD039309
JournalJournal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
Volume128
Issue number18
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 27 2023

Funding

RY acknowledges funding from NSF AGS 1748266 and NOAA AC4 Award Number: NA16OAR4310100. AF acknowledges funding from NASA Award Number: 80NSSC18K0628. POW, LX, and JDC thank NASA for support via 80NSSC18K0660 and 80NSSC21K1704. HG, DP, DD, PCJ, and JLJ acknowledge funding from NASA Grants #80NSSC18K0630 and #80NSSC21K1451. This material is based upon work supported by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is a major facility sponsored by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. 1852977. ECA, AJH, and RSH acknowledge funding from NASA Award No. 80NSSC18K0633. DRB, SM, and IJS acknowledge funding from NASA Award Number 80NSSC18K0632. TFH, GMW, JL, and JMSC were supported by NASA Tropospheric Composition Program and NOAA AC4 grant NA17OAR4310004. CCW, MAR, and JMK were supported in part by the NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA17OAR4320101 with CIRES. We acknowledge Samuel R. Hall and Kirk Ullmann for use of the CAFS data (NASA Award Number: 80NSSC18K0638). We acknowledge Armin Wisthaler and Laura Tomsche for their helpful conversations about their ammonia measurement. We acknowledge Jeffrey Pierce, Holly Nowell, and Charley Fite for helpful conversations. RY acknowledges funding from NSF AGS 1748266 and NOAA AC4 Award Number: NA16OAR4310100. AF acknowledges funding from NASA Award Number: 80NSSC18K0628. POW, LX, and JDC thank NASA for support via 80NSSC18K0660 and 80NSSC21K1704. HG, DP, DD, PCJ, and JLJ acknowledge funding from NASA Grants #80NSSC18K0630 and #80NSSC21K1451. This material is based upon work supported by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is a major facility sponsored by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. 1852977. ECA, AJH, and RSH acknowledge funding from NASA Award No. 80NSSC18K0633. DRB, SM, and IJS acknowledge funding from NASA Award Number 80NSSC18K0632. TFH, GMW, JL, and JMSC were supported by NASA Tropospheric Composition Program and NOAA AC4 grant NA17OAR4310004. CCW, MAR, and JMK were supported in part by the NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA17OAR4320101 with CIRES. We acknowledge Samuel R. Hall and Kirk Ullmann for use of the CAFS data (NASA Award Number: 80NSSC18K0638). We acknowledge Armin Wisthaler and Laura Tomsche for their helpful conversations about their ammonia measurement. We acknowledge Jeffrey Pierce, Holly Nowell, and Charley Fite for helpful conversations.

FundersFunder number
NA17OAR4310004, NA17OAR4320101
80NSSC18K0633, 80NSSC18K0632, 1852977, AGS 1748266
National Aeronautics and Space Administration80NSSC18K0630, 80NSSC18K0660, 80NSSC21K1704, 80NSSC21K1451, 80NSSC18K0628
National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationNA16OAR4310100
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences80NSSC18K0638

    Keywords

    • air quality
    • crops
    • emission factors
    • fires
    • prescribed

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