1. Near-real time estimation of smoke plume emissions from forest fires in EFFIS
NOVELTIS/Laboratoire d’Aérologie, Toulouse (France)
EFFIS - Joint Research Centre

2. Potential soil erosion
European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS)
Forest fire events
Danger
Forecast
Fire
Detection
Burnt area
maps
Vegetation
regeneration
Emission assessment
Potential soil erosion
estimates
Land cover
damage assessment

3. Estimation of smoke plume emissions
Estimation based on different calculations at the end of the fire (or end of fire season):
- for climatic studies : Seiler and Crutzen (1980) (fire emissions every month);
- for single-fire emission estimate: Leenhouts (1990)
(already existing in the EFFIS system – post-processing)
p= pollutant,
BA = burnt area (m2)
v=vegetation or ecosystem type
α(v)=fraction above ground,
BE(v)=burning efficiency (kg burnt fuel/m2)
EF(v,p)=emission factor for pollutant p and vegetation type v (kg pollutant/kg burnt fuel)
f=fuel component in the fuel model,
φ=combustion phase,
BE(f, φ) = burning efficiency (kg burnt fuel/m2)
EF(f, φ)=emission factor (kg pollutant/kg burnt fuel)

4. Method uses existing EFFIS datasets
Rapid damage assessment (day-by-day) of emissions enabled : use of shape of burnt area perimeters updated in in EFFIS up to twice a day from MODIS imagery
Improved burning efficiency : use of Fire Danger assessment in EFFIS, which provide estimates of fuel moisture content (Fuel components and fuel models according to the US-NFDRS fuel scheme)
Improved combustion phase : fine scale information on fuels and meteorological fields in EFFIS allows to reconstruct the fire intensity, then used to discriminate contributions of flaming/smoldering phases (adapted from FOFEM5)

5. Test in the largest fire of the 2009 season
Method first tested on a fire in the Attiki region (Greece)
20,520 ha burnt August 22nd and 23rd,
-Modelled fire intensity is found quite different between August 22nd and 23rd: largely due to differences in the fuel types, while meteorological factors and fuel moisture do not differ largely from one day to another (not shown here).

6. Results: Emission balance for Mediterranean Europe
Five most fire affected European Mediterranean countries : France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

7. Conclusions
New methodology applied to evaluate fire-by- fire the emissions in the European zone covered by the EFFIS system.
Main improvements in respect to other emission inventories :
(1) burning efficiency modelling, considering not only fuel type-dependence,
(2) fuel moisture estimates from FWI sub-indices.
(3) impact of fire intensity on the distribution of emissions during the different combustion phases.
(4) Updated emission factors also employed, derived from recent literature data.
Start of operational use of the methodology in EFFIS in 2012.