This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) provides $126,709 to Colorado State University to conduct a rapid assessment of air quality during wildland-urban interface fires in Southern California. The key goals are to sample and speciate air pollutants emitted from the fires, quantify the contribution of structure fires to concentrations and impacts of hazardous air pollutants, and analyze ash samples to understand the potential human and...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) provides $180,000 to conduct research on wildfire-generated nanoparticles and their impact on human health and the environment. The research aims to: 1) determine how temperature, composition of combustible materials, and soil composition influence the metal chemistry of fine particulate matter; 2) identify the mineralogy, metal associations, and morphology of these particles; and 3) examine how...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems awarded a $383,716 Project Grant to The Regents of the University of Colorado to improve understanding and predictive modeling of soot formation in wildfires. The 3-year project under the NSF Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) will utilize advanced experimental techniques to investigate the chemical precursors and growth mechanisms for soot particles emitted from the pyrolysis and...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $200,000 Project Grant under its Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) to the University of South Carolina. The purpose of this RAPID award is to examine the concentration, composition, and properties of metals, metal-bearing nanomaterials, and environmentally persistent free radicals in fire ash and soil collected following the recent Maui wildfire. The research aims to 1) quantify the levels of these contaminants, 2) characterize their properties...
This $199,669 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program will fund a rapid assessment of indoor and outdoor air quality in 20 Maui, Hawaii residential households affected by the 2023 wildfires. The project team from Harvard University and the University of Hawaii at Manoa will measure levels of particulate matter (PM), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to evaluate the impact of the fire-related air...
This Project Grant award, valued at $137,592 and provided by the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050), will support research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to investigate the impact of recent wildfires in the Los Angeles area on volatile organic compound (VOC) concentrations and their persistence in indoor environments.
The key objectives are to: (1) measure VOC levels during the 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires, and (2) assess VOC off-gassing...
This $400,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports the development of a meshed chemical sensor network to continuously monitor outdoor air for carcinogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) associated with wildfire smoke. The University of California, Davis will lead this 3-year effort to create a network of portable chemical sensors that can detect and quantify specific VOCs like benzene, toluene, and xylene. The sensor...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $150,000 Project Grant under the Geosciences (CFDA 47.050) program to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Office of Research Administration. The grant, awarded on October 1, 2023, will support a research project to characterize and understand smoke transport from the 2023 Hawaii wildfires using geostationary satellite observations and numerical modeling. Key objectives include: 1) quantifying the characteristics and temporal...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) provides $420,000 in funding to the University of South Carolina to conduct research on the impact of moderate and high-severity forest fires on metals transformations and the formation of disinfection by-products (DBPs) in drinking water.
The key objectives of this 3-year project are to: (1) characterize wildfire-induced metal transformations in field-collected ashes, soils, and forest...
This $400,000 two-year Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems will fund research at Worcester Polytechnic Institute to better understand the role of non-steady winds on wildfire spread. Specifically, the award will support examination of the physical mechanisms by which gusting winds interact with flame-driven wildfire spread and firebrand spotting. Novel imaging methods will also be used to measure these...