Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments Experiment - Air Quality Fire emissions in the US are approximately half from Northwestern wildfires and half from prescribed fires that burn mostly in the Southeast US. Wildfires burn slightly more fuel and therefore have overall larger emissions, but prescribed fires dominate the area burned and the number of fires. FIREX-AQ will investigate both wild and prescribed fires. Wildfires generally result in exposures with larger pollution concentrations over larger areas, and cause both local and regional air quality impacts. Their emissions are often transported thousands of miles and can impact large regions of the US at a time (Figure 3). Prescribed fires are usually smaller and less intense than most wildfires but occur more frequently and throughout the whole year. Read more here
