Issue 1, 2023

Chemical characterization of prescribed burn emissions from a mixed forest in Northern Michigan

Abstract

A prescribed burn was conducted in October 2017 at the University of Michigan Biological Station located in Pellston, Michigan. Approximately 0.025 km2 of a temperate forest, primarily composed of red and white pine, red oak, bigtooth aspen, and red maple, were burned. The resulting smoke was sampled with a combination of real-time trace gas and aerosol instrumentation aboard the Aerodyne Mobile Laboratory. The resulting data were segmented into six plume periods, and the gas and particle concentration and composition measurements were characterized relative to modified combustion efficiency (MCE), which reflected both smoldering and flaming combustion. Emission factors for C2H2, C2H6, CH4, and HCN were inversely related to MCE. The bulk submicron particle composition was characterized as mostly organic by mass (>92%). The majority of the bulk organic mass was within individual biomass burning particles (>93%, by number) in the accumulation mode. Analysis of the mass spectral ion peaks of individual biomass burning particles reveals two noteworthy signatures. First, red pine smoke contained combustion products of eugenol, released during the early stages of lignin combustion. Second, the combustion of northern hardwoods (e.g., oak, aspen, maple) exhibited polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons peaks corresponding to the combustion of furfural. The results from this study provide a detailed assessment of the composition of smoke emissions from biomass common to the understudied north-central United States.

Graphical abstract: Chemical characterization of prescribed burn emissions from a mixed forest in Northern Michigan

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
13 6 2022
Accepted
31 10 2022
First published
02 11 2022
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Environ. Sci.: Atmos., 2023,3, 35-48

Chemical characterization of prescribed burn emissions from a mixed forest in Northern Michigan

J. Y. Lee, C. Daube, E. Fortner, N. Ellsworth, N. W. May, J. Tallant, S. Herndon and K. A. Pratt, Environ. Sci.: Atmos., 2023, 3, 35 DOI: 10.1039/D2EA00069E

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements