Wildfire, prescribed burn, and agricultural burn smoke PM2.5 estimates for CA, WA, and OR 2014-2020

Wildfires, prescribed burns, and agricultural burns all impact ambient air quality across the Western U.S.; however, little is known about how communities across the region are differentially exposed to smoke from each of these fire types. To address this gap, we quantify smoke exposure stemming from wildfire, prescribed, and agricultural burns across Washington, Oregon, and California from 2014-2020 using a fire type-specific biomass burning emissions inventory and the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model. We examine fire type-specific PM2.5 concentration by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and in relation to the Center for Disease Control’s Social Vulnerability Index. Overall, population average PM2.5 concentrations are greater from wildfires than from prescribed and agricultural burns. While we found limited evidence of exposure disparities among sub-groups across the full study area, we did observe disproportionately higher exposures to wildfire-specific PM2.5 exposures among Nat..., , , # Fire type-specific smoke PM2.5

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.w0vt4b90g](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.w0vt4b90g)

We estimate daily PM2.5 exposure from wildfire, prescribed, and agricultural burns across WA, OR, and CA during 2014-2020, using biomass burning estimates from the Fire INventory from NCAR (FINN) and the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model. We first ran a global simulation at 4° x 5° resolution with 72 vertical levels to generate boundary conditions, followed by a nested grid simulation for the 11 western states at 0.25° x 0.3125° resolution. To estimate wildfire, prescribed burn, and agricultural burn-specific PM2.5 concentrations, we completed four model scenarios using different combinations of emissions inventories: 1) no biomass burning emissions (background only), 2) background plus only wildfire emissions, 3) background plus only prescribed burning emissions, and 4) background plus only agricultural burning emissions. Background sources refer to non-fire emissions ...