Air - WFW - Watershed, Fish, Wildlife, Air & Rare Plants

'Air' includes the areas of air quality and meteorology.

The Air Resources program assists field specialists in attaining the Chief's air priorities and manage resources from a healthy ecosystem perspective.

Air Quality

The Forest Service monitors the effects of air pollution that may impair visibility, harm human health, injure trees and other plants, acidify or cause unnatural fertilization of streams and lakes, leach nutrients from soils, and degrade cultural resources, like archeological sites and historical buildings. Forest activities that can affect air quality such as prescribed burning, ski areas, and mining are also monitored to ensure compliance with air regulations for human health and to monitor possible impacts to natural resources. For more information about the Forest Service and its role in protecting air quality, visit Air Resource Management at www.fs.fed.us/air.

Air Quality Images

Fire Wise

News

2006 National Paul Miller Clean Air Award Recipient

The National Paul Miller Clean Air Award recognizes singularly outstanding performance by an air quality specialist, manager, scientist, or technician who displays excellence through initiative, skill, determination, commitment, and/or achievement in furthering the stewardship of air resources on National Forests and Grasslands. Terry Svalberg, Bridger-Teton NF air specialist, is the recipient of the 2006 National Paul Miller Clean Air Award.

Award Letter (48.5 KB)

Smoke & Dust

This page features web site links that track smoke from wildfires and dust events.
Some require browser plugins to run animations.

General Sites for Disaster Information:

NOAA Disaster Information Server A site for all sorts of disaster information. Try out the special coverage and the 8 types of disasters.

Center for Air Pollution Impact and Trend Analysis Report and analysis of the dust and fire events. The Asia - FarEast and Central-America domains are good.

University of Wisconsin site for GOES pictures This site has pictures of Asian dust, also Florida Fires and Mexican Fires with analysis.

Other sites that are tracking smoke from the Florida fires:

NOAA Trajectories and Smoke Plume Forecasts Provides projections of ground level concentrations and forecasts of smoke plumes. You can also get the NIFC Incident Management Report from here.

NOAA GOES Satellite Coverage of Florida fires Check out the media advisory summary for other web sites. There are also loops of satellite pictures.

NASA Global Fire Monitoring Site NASA Goddard site with access to different fire episodes (nice site, needs animation plugin for some pages). Check out the global vegetation fires from 1992 and 1993.

Asian Dust Event Sites (April 1998):

NASA Animation of China Dust NASA site with animation of dust moving over the Pacific Ocean and into California and Nevada.