Modeling Air Pollution Due to Forest Fire

Abstract

Air pollution has long been a major environmental concern in many countries. The major sources of air pollution are vehicles exhausts, open burning and emission from industrial stacks and power generation stations as well as forest fires. Air pollution poses hazards to human health, poisons rivers and lakes, damages trees and kills wildlife. Major pollutants are carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matters. Forest fire is a large scale, unenclosed and freely spreading natural combustion process that consumes various ages, sizes and types of vegetative matter of the forest. When it rages out of control, it produces tons of pollutants which then trapped in our atmosphere and the forming of smog to lower the visibility over the cities such as the case of the Indonesian forest fire effects on our country. Hence, the ability to simulate air pollution scenarios that may arise from various sources is urgently needed in order to provide a means for mitigation and protection. This paper will present the application of a suite of air pollution models known as ISC-AERMOD View, which is developed by Lakes Environmental Software in collaboration with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). This package combines three of the most versatile air dispersion models available, namely The Industrial Source Complex ? Short Term regulatory air dispersion model (ISCST3), ?AER MOD? and The Industrial Source Complex ? Plume Rise Model Enhancements (ISC-PRIME). Some preliminary results will be discussed.