Grant: Alliance Grants

In 2023, record wildfires in Canada during record surface temperatures and excessively dry conditions, generating by far the largest annual burned area (18 million Ha) in our recorded history. Recently increasing annual burned area and wildfire intensity in Canada and around the world are linked to (i) landscape wide fuel build-up resulting from a history of wildfire suppression that removes smaller, regular, restorative fire from fire adapted ecosystems, and (ii) climate change that is producing more frequent extreme fire weather. In addition, wildfires in Canada have a disproportionate impact on Indigenous Peoples, who, since European colonization, have largely been excluded from practicing cultural burning (the use of fire to steward lands for culturally and ecologically beneficial purposes) and participating collectively in wildfire management. While we know wildfire smoke poses serious health risks, we know little of how smoke toxicity varies with changing smoke composition. This results largely from the lack of available near-source wildfires emissions data driven by high cost and limited mobility of the state-of-the-art air-quality monitoring instruments. This project aims to thoroughly test, refine, and then apply a preliminarily tested UAV-sensor-based wildfire emissions monitoring system, we have named Black Kite. This will occur through four distinct research themes: (1) Calibration and accuracy, precision and uncertainty assessment of the system's light-weight air quality sensors; (2) the application of Black Kite in support of Indigenous Fire Stewardship (IFS) (demonstrating emissions reduction from cultural fire vs wildfire); (3) the application of Black Kite in the assessment of the factors driving the variability in smoke released from wildfires; and (4) refinement of Black Kite uncertainty using post-processing (i.e., machine-learning) data analyses. Successful development and application of Black Kite has the potential to make significant contributions to wildfire smoke science, IFS, and even contribute to current provincial wildfire management strategies. We are confident this system will produce distinct socioeconomic and environmental benefits for Canada.