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Congratulations to�� Kate Goldfarb, Arielle Milkman, and their NWA/NOAA collaborators on their 3-year, $400,000+ grant,��"Smoke Exposure and Underserved Wildland Fire Communities,” to aid in Arielle’s research. Abstract below. Well done!

A substantial proportion of the wildfire responders in the United States are migrant and immigrant workers with origins in Mexico and Central America.��These contract fire responders chase fires across the western United States, making them the most exposed people to outdoor particulate matter pollution (PM2.5) in the country, if not the world. Given their extreme level of exposure, it is exigent that accurate air quality measurements reach on-the-ground decision-makers and firefighters themselves, in order to guide decisions about camp locations, sleeping arrangements, workflow and the use of personal protective equipment.��Despite the relevance of NOAA NWS products such as��National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC), the current models lack in situ observations of their performance in extreme wildfire conditions. Scientists do not know how the burden of exposure faced by wildland fire responders compares with model outputs. The atmospheric science community also has limited knowledge of how migrant fire response crews use NOAA NWS forecasting models and understand their own exposure to pollutants in tandem with other workplace hazards.����

This project fills this major gap in our understanding of a) the air quality monitoring and forecasting needs of migrant and immigrant wildland fire response teams, and b) the performance of NOAA forecasting models in extreme environments. This project brings together researchers from the ��ƷSM����ӰƬ Department of Anthropology and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), with scientists at the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory (CSL) in partnership with the NOAA National Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Environmental Modeling Centers (EMC) Physics Branch. We use qualitative social science methodologies paired with accurate air quality monitoring activities to answer: 1) What sort of weather and air quality information do wildland firefighters and management teams need in order to make informed operations decisions that minimize risk to on-the-ground crew members? How do (im)migrant fire response communities and supervising institutions, like incident management teams, conceptualize, understand, and address risks from air pollution and smoke exposure on the fire line? 2) What barriers exist in communicating data from NOAA NWS to decision-makers and crew members in an extreme fire context? How might we develop practical interventions to address barriers to communication, incorporating knowledge of cultural norms and hierarchies between decision-makers and firefighters? 3) How might science communities accurately quantify air pollution exposure in a hyper-mobile population whose work directs them to areas of extreme pollution��—��so extreme that generalized air quality models are unable to estimate highly localized risk?��

This multi-year collaborative research project between the ��ƷSM����ӰƬ, National Weather Service NCEP Environmental Monitoring Centers and NOAA CSL has the following objectives: 1) Understand the extent to which NOAA NWS air quality forecasting tools are used by migrant and immigrant fire responders, barriers to access, and how increased use of the available forecasting tools may better equip fire responders; 2) Conduct small-scale, participatory air quality monitoring with migrant and immigrant fire responders, documenting the exposure levels of a population that has not been included in previous air quality studies; 3) Evaluate the accuracy of NWS air quality forecasts through in situ observations of PM2.5 and ozone exposure in extreme firefighting environments.��

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