Guidelines for estimating volume, biomass, and smoke production for piled slash

Abstract

Guidelines in the form of a six-step approach are provided for estimating volumes, oven-dry mass, consumption, and particulate matter emissions for piled logging debris. Seven stylized pile shapes and their associated geometric volume formulae are used to estimate gross pile volumes. The gross volumes are then reduced to net wood volume by applying an appropriate wood-to-pile volume packing ratio. Next, the oven-dry mass of the pile is determined by using the wood density, or a weighted-average of two wood densities, for any of 14 tree species commonly piled and burned in the Western United States. Finally, the percentage of biomass consumed is multiplied by an appropriate emission factor to determine the mass of PM, PM10, and PM2.5 produced from the burned pile. These estimates can be extended to represent multiple piles, or multiple groups of similar piles, to estimate the particulate emissions from an entire burn project.