Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 6
Emissions from Forest Fires: Methods
of Estimation and National Results
Valentina Bacciu, Donatella Spano and Michele Salis
Abstract
Emissions from forest fires are recognized to be an important health
and environment issue. Fire emissions (FE) include a wide range of gaseous com-
pounds and particles significantly contributing to the atmospheric budgets at local,
regional and even global scale. In the last decades, several experimental and mod-
elling studies were carried out to improve knowledge of the atmospheric impact
of vegetation fires. FE estimates are affected by several errors and uncertainties;
improvements were made possible through new advances in remote sensing,
experimental measurements of emission factors and fuel consumption models. In
this context, the aim of this chapter is to summarize the state of the research con-
cerning atmospheric FE, highlighting the main methodologies and related uncer-
tainties. In addition, this work presents an overview of historical trends and future
scenarios of FE in Italy, starting from the most recent inventories.
6.1 Introduction
Among the primary effects of forest fires, the production of GHGs and solid
particulate matter is one of the most important ones (Michel et al.
2005
; Ito and
Penner
2004
). CO
2
and CO, being responsible for about 90-95 % of the total car-
bon emitted (Andreae and Merlet
2001
), are the dominant fractions released by
fires. The remaining 5-10 % of carbon emitted is represented by carbonaceous aer-
osol (35 %), nitrogen oxides (20 %), and CH
4
(6 %) (IPCC
2001
). Less than 5 %
of the carbon is emitted as particulate matter (PM
2.5
and PM10, Reid et al.
2005
).
