Numerical Modelling Of The Impact Of Wildlandurban
Interface Fires On Coimbra Air Quality
Author(s)
A. I. Miranda, J. H. Amorim, V. Martins, C. Pimentel,
R. Rodrigues, R. Tavares & C. Borrego
Abstract
Forest fires are a major emission source of pollutants to the atmosphere with
several adverse impacts on human health and ecosystems either at local, regional
or global scales. Entire populations can be exposed to hazardous concentrations
of toxins, especially when fire occurs in the vicinity of cities, as recently drawn
by large wildfires in Southeast Asia, Australia, South America or Russia, but
also Southern Europe, namely in Portugal. Nowadays there is a growing concern
about the increase in both the frequency and the severity of forest fires spreading
in the urban wildland interface (WUI) as a consequence of the escalation of
urban development among or adjacent to wildlands. The main purpose of this
paper is to estimate the impact of wildland forest fires on the air quality of a city
in Portugal. Aiming to take into account the effect of a larger atmospheric scale
in the very local urban one, a multi-scale approach was adopted, which implied
the link between a chemistry-transport mesoscale model (LOTOS-EUROS) and
a microscale computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. Forest fire emissions
were estimated based on specific southern European emission factors, type of
vegetation, area burned and fire behaviour, and were incorporated in the
emission input data of the numerical modelling system. Results confirm the
strong impact of forest fires on the urban air pollution levels. Statistical
indicators were used to validate the modelling application through the
comparison of results to measured air quality data. This modelling approach has
got very good performance skills showing the possibility of applying this kind of
system to analyse the relation between forest fires and urban air pollution.
Keywords: smoke, forest fires, wildland urban interface, numerical modelling,
multi-scale, urban air quality.
Keywords
smoke, forest fires, wildland urban interface, numerical modelling,
multi-scale, urban air quality.
Related Book
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