"When smoke is generated from a wildland fire, BlueSkyRAINS helps people to determine where the smoke will go and how much of a problem it may be for breathing and visibility," explains Sue Ferguson, an atmospheric scientist based in at the Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Station and developer of the modeling system. "BlueSkyRAINS is a technology that allows you to go to one centralized Web site to see the potential accumulation of smoke from planned fires and wildfires. It shows the patterns of predicted smoke concentrations in relation to cities, hospitals, schools, parks, or other elements of interest."
Ferguson, based in Seattle at PNW Research Station's Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory, says her team of scientists began work on this technology in 2000. By 2002 the first prototype was up and running. The first tests began with the Quartz Mountain wildfire complex in the Pasayton Wilderness of the Okanogan National Forest in Washington's northern Cascades.
"We worked with smoke managers, burn bosses, and air regulators for many years prior to developing BlueSkyRAINS," Ferguson says. "As wildfires became larger and more frequent and the use of prescribed fire increased, smoke became an increasingly difficult problem. Smoke doesn't know about fences making it difficult to coordinate across land ownerships. So we came up with the idea of a centralized, automated system."
The BlueSkyRAINS was created by Fergus
'"/>
Contact: sherri richardson-dodge
srichardsondodge@fs.fed.us
503-808-2137
USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station
15-Sep-2003