Overview
Agricultural field burning is a common post-harvest activity, both in the farming of Kentucky Bluegrass for grass seed and in wheat farming. Consequently, many thousands of acres of agricultural fields are burned in northern Idaho and eastern Washington each year. Local burn managers, operating under various state and tribal jurisdictions, permit field burning when predicted meteorology suggests both safe burning and adequate dispersion of smoke. In spite of this precaution, smoke plumes sometimes affect population centers, constituting both a health hazard and a public nuisance. Networks of air-quality monitoring instruments for particulate matter (PM), operated by the various jurisdictions, capture data on such occurrences of smoky conditions.