Colorado Smoke Management Program

Photo Gallery

Nov. 2011 note:  This page will vanish in early 2012.  We need to manage our workload and this part of the smoke website wasn't getting many visitors.  Meanwhile new reports are not being posted.

The linked .pdfs listed below are excerpts from the annotated photos we send back to permittees after most burns we attend.  The files are 200-900 kB and may download slowly.  For each burn a conditions permitting category and report focus are listed, but other subjects are also addressed less intensively. 

Smoke from piles southwest of Grand Junction was monitored intensively because the downwind airshed is so sensitive; Official instrument data suggest Grand Junction is on the verge of becoming designated as bein in non-attainment for particulates.  The paired views show how different smoke can look from a distance versus from a burn.

spring 2011

Button Rock, Longmont Fire Department, 1b standard.  Challenges of excessively small piles.

Cache la Poudre, Canyon Lakes RD, 1b standard piles and broadcast tbd. Fuels considerations for future large broadcast burn.

Delaney Butte, CSFS Steamboat Springs on CDoW land, 2c rural standard.  Quandary of remote burns, and planning that reflects understanding of site air flow patterns.

Glacier View HOA, 5c non-standard.  Long-standing and trash-free community slash piles on windy sites.

Green Ridge, Sulphur RD, 1c standard. Very well-built piles, and more musing about chunking.

Perry Park, Larkspur Fire Department, 1c, 3c and 4c.  New permittee agency managing burning of both collection site and built-in-place piles in a large subdivision.

Ranch A, 5c non-standard.  Burning of the largest pile APCD staff have or are likely ever to see.

Ranch B, 4b non-standard.  Challenges of excessively short piles.

Running Deer, Fort Collins Natural Areas, 1c sensitive standard.  Small burn with light fuel in an urban setting

Spiranthes, Fort Collins Natural Areas, 1c sensitive standard.  Proposed burn in cattails, and a few thoughts about agricultural open burning.

Wolf Creek Ski Area, 3c standard.  New permittee with a pile that can be improved

 

fall 2010

Aspen, two private ski resorts burn small numbers of 1b and 1c piles visible from downtown.

Arsenal Broadcast, USFWS, 1c sensitive.  Light and variable wind; densely urban setting.

CFLRP, Ouray and Norwood Ranger Districts, future permits.  Huge 10-year restoration project that poses large-scale smoke challenges, including fuel variability.

Crystal Lakes HOA, 5c.  Large, well-managed community slash pile on a small site.

Doe Canyon, Dolores Ranger District, 3a rural.  Very straightforward pine underburn.

Fetters, South Metro Fire Department, 1c sensitive non-standard.  Photos from the burn boss of an APCD experiment with burning below 7,000' in winter in metro Denver.

Hahn's Peak / Bears Ears District projects, 2c piles and 2c rural broadcast projects in rural Routt County, including thinning on a north aspect

Hayden Creek, Bayfield Ranger District, 3c sensitive.  Smoke and power lines.

Kim Area.  Cattle ranchers burning pushed-over juniper trees.

Las Colonias, Grand Junction Fire Department, 5c.  Building cleaner tamarisk piles then burning them in downtown Grand Junction's challenging airshed.

November*, Conejos Ranger District, 3b rural.  Adaptive management in mixed conifer restoration, and an attempted experiment with fair dispersion.

Pine Mountain, Grand Valley Ranger District, 3a rural.  Complex topographic influences on smoke.

Powderhorn, Gunnison BLM, 3c and 2b rural.  Planning for aerial ignition.

Private land A, clean 3c logging piles

Range 143*, Fort Carson, 1b sensitive.  Prescribed fire driven by military training on the same land.

Summit Cove, Dillon Ranger District, a future project burning machine piles directly above a high-density subdivision

*  Broadcast days where at least 50% of standard condition acres for the risk category were burned.

Expecting or wanting APCD staff to attend your burn or visit the site with you beforehand?  We've written out what you can expect.  The intents of our field time include mutual learning, checking compliance with permit conditions, and developing ideas for improvements to the smoke management program.  What we photograph and subsequently describe reflects these intents.  Somewhat coincidentally but featured in some excerpts, the photos may also show

• a variety of fuels, weather, and other influences on smoke 
• good, and occasionally mediocre, practices in smoke management
• some of the things smoke can do, expected and otherwise 

We post excerpted reports as one more way to learn about smoke.  Use them to become a yet better burner.  And please tell us what you see in them that we may have missed or that you otherwise find interesting. 

What these photos are not:

• They are not smoke monitoring reports.  To monitor smoke one must be well off-site.  Our field work focuses as much on interacting with the people present at a burn as on observing smoke.  The burn boss monitors smoke for use in real-time decisionmaking.  We don't.  The photographs that are of smoke often reflect a specific curiosity.
• They aren't a complete list.  For almost as many reasons as omissions, there are no photos here for a quarter to a third of our site visits.  Also, they are from only the most recent couple seasons.  We have many old ones; If you're interested in a particular topic, contact us.
• None is the full-length version of a report.  The website isn't big enough for all the photos.
• They aren't dirty laundry.  Reports are part of our on-going dialog with every permittee.  The full text may include speculations, parts of unfinished conversations, suggestions for improvements in smoke management, operational glitches, etc.  All are omitted here - and will be when your report is posted.   
• Finally, they aren't infallibly accurate.  We try to check photo captions, but errors creep through. 

All of the photos (and text) are in the public domain.  They may be copied and re-used freely.  If you need a higher-resolution .jpg, contact us.