RII Track-4: Partnership Between the University of Wyoming and the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Multi-Scale Wildland Fire Research

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Wildland fire modeling entails prediction of ignition, spread, emissions, and other fire characteristics. Accurate predictive modeling can lead to better land management decisions, climate modeling, and public health management. Such modeling is a challenging endeavor, however, due to myriad complexities including variability in fuel composition, fuel geometry, and environmental conditions such as wind speed and humidity. Field- and laboratory-based experimental measurements are utilized to develop sub-models, such as models of quantities and types of emissions produced from fires, and validation of integrated models. This NSF RII Track-4 Fellowship will enable the University of Wyoming (UW) PI and her graduate student to visit the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory (MFL) in Missoula, MT, over the next two years in order to engage with MFL researchers in multi-scale wildland fire-related experiments and modeling. Specifically, the UW researchers will work with MFL researchers to evaluate and improve a model for wildland fire emissions that the UW researchers have developed and tested at a small, laboratory scale to-date. This model allows for the prediction of emissions as a function of factors such as fire fuel composition and environmental conditions, including ambient oxygen level and humidity. This Fellowship will allow the UW researchers to work with MFL researchers to test this model under larger-scale and more complex, but well-characterized, fire conditions.The RII Track-4 Fellowship will offer the UW team access to world-class facilities and collaborators to scale their research and test a research hypothesis regarding wildland fire emissions over different scales. The hypothesis is that aerosol emissions formation can be predicted by coupling quantification of key influential effects on emissions formation at micro-scales and accurate prediction of relevant variables in full-scale fires. Effects of biomass composition and fire environment on aerosol emissions have been demonstrated at the micro-scale at UW, and findings will be tested at larger scales where conditions are less tightly controlled than in micro-scale experiments. At larger scales, additional factors such as heat and mass transport limitations and complex entrainment of ambient gases into combustion products may confound the measurement of such effects, making experimentation on well-defined and well-controlled platforms critical to elucidation of these factors. The MFL has not only the facilities to enable the UW researchers to perform these scaled-up experiments, but also fire science experts with whom collaboration will be invaluable to ensuring maximal relevance of this work to current and future wildland fire modeling efforts. The UW team will work with MFL research engineers with expertise in fire experimentation using platforms including a burn box platform and a wind tunnel platform in which the combustion environment can be well-controlled and well-characterized. Additionally, the UW team with work with MFL research engineers with expertise in fire and smoke modeling to ensure the relevance of the UW team’s work to emissions modeling efforts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.