2022: Idaho's Year in Wildfire

The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) responds to the yearly deterioration of air quality due to  smoke from wildfires  in a variety of ways, including air quality monitoring and forecasting, outreach to protect public health, compilation of emissions from wildfire sources, flagging of monitoring data for exceptional events demonstrations, and analysis of wildfire trends and events.

This Storymap summarizes Idaho's 2022 wildfire season within a historical context and provides the following information:

• An infographic dashboard highlights relevant statistics of the wildfire season such as area burned and the number and location of wildfires.
• A review of notable local fires.
• Emissions data and an annual report linked to a map of wildfire perimeters.
• Outreach information, season length, and response dates.
• Air quality during the wildfire season in time-series charts for each DEQ regional office area.
• Historical charts putting the 2022 wildfire season into context with the past decade.

The 2022 Idaho Year in Wildfire Dashboard summarizes important parameters describing the magnitude, impact, and character of the 2022 wildfire season in Idaho, including the number of wildfires, total acres burned, and fire causes.

The interactive map defines the locations of all fires identified in the  National Interagency Fire Center's (NIFC) Wildland Fire Interagency Geospatial Services (WFIGS)  2022 Wildland Fire Perimeter to Date polygons. Zoom in on the map and click on individual fires to reveal detailed information, including name, acreage burned, and start date.

Photo credits: Inciweb

Every year, wildfires consume hundreds of thousands of acres of vegetation across Idaho and millions more throughout the Western United States. Wildfires are one of the largest sources of criteria air pollutants such as carbon monoxide ( CO ), fine particulate matter ( PM2.5 ), oxides of nitrogen ( NOx ), and volatile organic compounds ( VOC ). Emissions vary from year-to-year based on the number, size, and location of wildfires.

Wildfire emissions and acres burned were compiled from WFIGS data available within WFEIS. These emissions estimates and acres reported may vary from other works based on differing methods and data inputs.

In 2022, a total of 418,571 acres were consumed by wildfire. This is below the 10-year average of around 600,000 acres and is similar to the 425,703 acres burned in 2021. Wildfires in Idaho in 2022 released about a 113,000 metric tons of PM2.5 and 750,000 tons of CO gas. Additionally, over 9,000 tons of NOx and 175,000 tons of VOC (the two main ozone precursor pollutants) were emitted into the atmosphere. Wildfires continue to be the single largest source of CO, VOC, and PM2.5 emissions in Idaho in 2022.

Link to 2022 wildfire emissions report  here .

IDEQ engages in extensive wildfire response and outreach activities during wildfire season. Each day, meteorologists forecast fire weather and a smoke outlook. Air quality forecasters provide 24-hour Air Quality Index ( AQI) forecasts  and supplemental information for each DEQ region. DEQ also provides a situational awareness and air quality decision support system website, the  Idaho Wildfire Smoke Portal .

DEQ produces and follows the Idaho Wildfire Smoke Event Response Protocol, to assist communication and coordination between DEQ and other agencies. Interagency coordination calls are held periodically throughout the season, as events dictate. DEQ also hosts a  wildfire blog  that incorporates informational posts from DEQ and other state or tribal agencies.

The 2022 wildfire season began in mid to late July and lasted through the end of September. The  IDEQ Wildfire Blog  was active from July 19 to September 23 in 2022.

The  Idaho Wildfire Smoke Portal  was active and updated daily from July 19 to September 30 in 2022.

The 2022 Outreach Activities Dashboard summarizes the IDEQ outreach activities during the 2022 fire season.

The 2022 wildfire season was characterized by a less than average annual amount of Idaho acres burned and minimal transport from upwind states. The largest Idaho fire, Moose, affected air quality in Salmon from mid-July through Mid-September. There was a one week period in early September where interstate transport of wildfire smoke affected air quality statewide. Otherwise, there were no major regional transport episodes and local fires dominated. As a result, air quality days >100 AQI at Idaho monitors were 50% of what they were in 2021.

The chart below provides the normalized percentages of days in each AQI category during the 2022 wildfire season by IDEQ regional office. The table below the chart provides the raw values that make up the percentages.

The Historical Wildfire Burned Areas map shows the location and extent of every wildfire that occurred in Idaho since 2012. Zoom in on the map and click on a wildfire to access attribute information. Use the filter tool to segment the data by year. Reset the filter to show all years.

Burned area data are from the Wildland Fire Interagency Geospatial Services (WFIGS) and were obtained through the Wildland Fire Emissions Inventory System ( WFEIS ) . WFIGS is a National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) dataset intended to replace the original Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination Group (GeoMAC) perimeters. Information and downloads are available at the  NIFC open data site . WFEIS processes perimeters to non-overlapping daily perimeters for each unique fire.

Emissions data were obtained from  WFEIS , by processing the WFIGS data using the default fuel moisture values and the FCCS fuelbed system. Outputs were aggregated to individual events. Emissions are reported in Megagrams (Mg) or metric tons. One metric ton is equivalent to 1.1 US (or short) tons.

Historical emissions, area burned, wildfire counts, and wildfire seasonality data were compiled from WFIGS data available within WFEIS and calculated using default consumption values. Output perimeters were aggregated to burn unit. Charts were prepared in ESRI ArcPro software. Historical air quality heat maps were obtained from EPA's AirData site.

Source: US EPA AirData

For questions related to Idaho DEQ's:

• Smoke Management Program, contact Mark Boyle - Smoke Management Supervisor (208-666-4607) - mark.boyle@deq.idaho.gov
• Outreach and Response, contact Sally Hunter - Smoke Management Analyst (208-373-0181) - sally.hunter@deq.idaho.gov
• Air Quality, Fire Emissions, and Wildfire Data, contact Sara Strachan - Senior Scientist (208-373-0567) - sara.strachan@deq.idaho.gov
• Fire Emissions and Meteorology, contact Kimi Smith - Airshed Modeling and Meteorology Supervisor (208-373-0175) - kimi.smith@deq.idaho.gov