Using Low-Cost Sensors for Fenceline Monitoring to Measure Emissions from Prescribed Fires

Prescribed burning is a highly effective way to reduce wildfire risk; however, prescribed fires release harmful pollutants. Quantifying emissions from prescribed fires is valuable for atmospheric modeling and understanding impacts on nearby communities. Emissions are commonly reported as emission factors, which are traditionally calculated cumulatively over an entire combustion event. However, cumulative emission factors do not capture variability in emissions throughout a combustion event. Reliable emission factor calculations require knowledge of the state of the plume, which is unavailable when equipment is deployed for multiple days. In this study, we evaluated two different methods used to detect prescribed fire plumes: the event detection algorithm and a random forest model. Results show that the random forest model outperformed the event detection algorithm, with a detection accuracy of 61% and a 3% false positive rate, compared to 51% accuracy and a 31% false positive rate for the event detection algorithm. Overall, the random forest model provides more robust emission factor calculations and a promising framework for plume detection on future prescribed fires. This work provides a unique approach to fenceline monitoring, as it is one of the only projects to our knowledge using fenceline monitoring to measure emissions from prescribed fire plumes.