An Integrated Modeling Approach for Climate Change: Interactions between climate change, biomass, forest fires, and air quality

Principal Investigators: Uma Shankar, Aijun Xiu and Douglas Fox
Carolina Environmental Program and Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere

This research is assessing the cyclical nature of the impacts of climate change and variability on biomass and the fire potential of forest fuel loads, the impact of forest fires on ozone and PM air quality, and the regional climate response to the changing atmospheric composition. The project is being conducted by Institute's Center for Environmental Modeling for Policy Development in collaboration with Dr. Doug Fox, a fire modeling expert at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, Ft. Collins, CO, and Dr. Steven G. McNulty at the USDA Forest Service. The primary objectives are (1) to investigate the impacts of climate change on vegetative cover and fuel characteristics, the consequences for fire frequency and intensity, and feedbacks to biomass load and biogenic emissions under managed and wildfire scenarios; (2) to examine changes in regional air quality due to the evolution of anthropogenic and biogenic emissions in response to the various fire scenarios; and (3) to investigate the feedback of the air quality changes to regional climate variables.

The project uses an innovative integrated modeling approach for these investigations that links a forest growth model, an advanced emissions modeling system that includes a stochastic fire prediction model and a smoke emissions model, and a regional air quality modeling system that models the radiative feedbacks of atmospheric trace pollutants to the regional climate dynamics. The demonstration application of this system is over the southern U.S. Achievement of the project objectives will result in a modeling system that can be used to further the understanding of the air quality and climate impacts of fires, and eventually be refined for decision support in forest and fire management practices in order to mitigate these impacts. The project will also develop advanced mathematical models of stochastic fires that consider human factors, e.g., arson, as causative factors in fire ignition.

Integrated System for Modeling the Cyclical Impacts of Climate Change, Forest Growth, Biomass Combustion, and Air Quality.