Data-Driven Wildland Fire Research

“Better measures of outdoor and indoor exposure to wildfire smoke”
Prof. Marshall Burke
Deputy Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment
Sam Heft-Neal
Research Scholar at the Center on Food Security and the Environment

We use data from ground sensors and satellites to measure the contribution of wildfire smoke to ambient air pollution over the last two decades in the US, showing that wildfires now account for up to half of key air pollutants in recent years. Using distributed indoor sensors and leakage data on hundreds of thousands of residential homes, we then quantify how outdoor pollution infiltrates indoor environments.  We document wide variation in infiltration across houses, some of which is explained by socioeconomic and racial/ethnic differences.