Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2022

Description

Wildfire outbreaks can lead to extreme biomass burning (BB) emissions of both oxidized (e.g., nitrogen oxides; NOx= NO+NO2) and reduced form(e.g., ammonia; NH3) nitrogen (N) compounds. High N emissions aremajor concerns for air quality, atmospheric deposition, and consequential human and ecosystemhealth impacts. In this study, we use both satellite-based observations and modeling results to quantify the contribution of BB to the total emissions, and approximate the impact on total N deposition in the western U.S. Our results show that during the 2020 wildfire season of August–October, BB contributes significantly to the total emissions, with a satellite-derived fraction of NH3 to the total reactiveN emissions (median~40%) in the range of aircraft observations. During the peak of the western August Complex Fires in September, BB contributed to~55%(for the contiguous U.S.) and~83%(for thewestern U.S.) of the monthly total NOx and NH3 emissions. Overall, there is good model performance of the George Mason University- Wildfire Forecasting System(GMU-WFS) used in this work. The extreme BB emissions lead to significant contributions to the total N deposition for different ecosystems in California, with an average August – October 2020 relative increase of~78%(from7.1 to 12.6 kg ha−1 year−1) in deposition rate tomajor vegetation types (mixed forests+grasslands/ shrublands/savanna) compared to the GMU-WFS simulations without BB emissions. For mixed forest types only, the average N deposition rate increases (from 6.2 to 16.9 kg ha−1 year−1) are even larger at ~173%. Such large N deposition due to extreme BB emissions are much (~6-12 times) larger than low-end critical load thresholds for major vegetation types (e.g., forests at 1.5-3 kg ha−1 year−1), and thus may result in adverse N deposition effects across larger areas of lichen communities found in California's mixed conifer forests.

Publication Title

Science of the Total Environment

Volume

829

DOI of Published Version

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156130

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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