Disturbances that are strongly linked to global climatic cycles may occur in a regular, predictable manner that affects composition and distribution of ecological communities. The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influences worldwide precipitation patterns and has occurred with regular periodicity over the last 130 000 years. We hypothesized that ENSO, through effects on local weather condit...

While emissions of pollutants from conventional sources, such as industrial and thermal processes, have been in decline over the last two decades, fires have become major sources for the emission of several contaminants. This review summarises chemical mechanisms pertinent to the formation of prominent pollutants, such as NOx, HCN, HCl, soot, and trace species, such as PCDD/Fs (dioxins). We com...

Biomass samples from a diverse range of ecosystems were burned in the Intermountain Fire Sciences Laboratory open combustion facility. Midinfrared spectra of the nascent emissions were acquired at several heights above the fires with a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR) coupled toan open multipas• cell. In this report, he results from smoldering combustion during 24 fires are presen...

BACKGROUND Fire-related mortality rates are known to be higher in Aboriginal people in BC. The purpose of this study was to describe the epidemiology and context of fire-related deaths in this population. METHODS All death registrations attributable to fires in the province were identified by the B.C. Vital Statistics Agency (1991-2001). Age-specific death rates (ASDR) and age-standardized mo...

The spatial-temporal dynamics of forest fires for last five years in latitudinal range 40-74 degrees of the northern latitude are analyzed with using the data of the radiometer AVHRR/NOAA. It was shown that forest fires are observed from May till September, basically during three summer months with a maximum of the activity during the second half of summer. On a phase of a maximum of an 11-year...

An experiment was carried out to examine the subjective estimation of fire growth for young adults and their perceived ability to extinguish fires. In the experiment, participants filled out a questionnaire consisting of two parts. The first part involved prediction of fire growth, and the participants were asked to estimate the times between different stages of fires. The second part involved ...

According to recent studies, two widespread droughts occurred in the Amazon basin, one during 2005 and one during 2010. The drought increased the prevalence of climate-driven fires over most of the basin. Given the importance of human-atmosphere-vegetation interactions in tropical rainforests, these events have generated concerns over the vulnerability of this area to climate change. This paper...

NASA plans to launch the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the polar orbiting Earth Observation System (EOS) for morning and evening global observations in 1998 and afternoon and night observations in 2000. These 4 MODIS daily fire observations will advance global fire monitoring with special 1 km resolution fire channels at 4 μm and 11 μm, with high saturation at 500K an...