Wildland fire emission

Wildland fire and wildland fire atmospheric emissions have been a part of the global biosphere for millennia (Pyne 1995). The major wildland fire emissions include greenhouse gasses and several criteria pollutants that impact human health and welfare (Lahm 1994):

Emissions	Grams of Emission / Kilogram of Fuel Burned	Prozentualer Anteil
Carbon Dioxide	1564.8	71.44%
Water	459.2	20.97%
Carbon Monoxide	120.9	5.52%
Particulate Matter <2.5μ	10.3	0.47%
Nitric Oxide	8.5	0.39%
Methane	5.9	0.27%
Volatile Organic Compounds	5.2	0.24%
Organic Carbon	5.2	0.24%
Non-methane Hydrocarbon	4.3	0.20%
Particulate Matter > 10μ	3.8	0.17%
Particulate Matter <10μ and >2.5μ	1.9	0.09%
Elemental Carbon	0.4	0.02%

Compared to the preindustrial era, wildland land fire in the conterminous U.S. has been reduced 90 percent with proportional reductions in wildland fire emissions. Land use changes (agriculture and urbanization) are responsible for roughly 50 percent of this decrease, and land management decisions (land fragmentation, suppression actions, etc.) are responsible for the remainder (Leenhouts 1998). Anthropogenic activities (e.g., industrial production, transportation, agriculture, etc.) today have more than replaced the lost preindustrial wildland fire atmospheric emissions.

The following charts compare preindustrial wildland fire emissions (Leenhouts 1998) with contemporary emissions (EPA 1998) and (EPA 1999).

• 
  Carbon Dioxide
• 
  Carbon Monoxide
• 
  Nitric Oxide
• 
  Volatile Organic Compounds
• 
  Particulate Matter <10μ
• 
  Particulate Matter <2.5μ

References

• EPA. 1998. The National Air Pollutant Emission Trends: 1900-1997. [1]
• EPA. 1999. Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990 - 1999. [2]
• Lahm, P. 1994. Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Committee emissions inventory. Western Governors' Association, Denver, Colorado, USA. [Unpublished.]
• Leenhouts, B. 1998. Assessment of biomass burning in the conterminous United States. Conservation Ecology [online] 2(1): 1. [3]
• Pyne, Stephen J. 1995. World fire: The culture of fire on earth. University of Washington Press. 384 pp.