About
The Southern Smoke Management Guide made use of a simple graphical smoke screening system. This system relied upon a simple protractor to use with paper maps in marking out a smoke impact zone. SHRMC has created a digital version of this tool. This is a simple screening tool designed to help identify smoke sensitive targets not to predict smoke concentrations. It follows the graphical screening method outlined here. The acreage value is used to set the width of the screening grid and also increases the screening distance for larger burns. Latitude and Longitude should be entered in decimal degrees.
The screening area shown on the map is divided into 3 zones. The first zone (colored red) is used to identify critical smoke-sensitive areas. This is the most probable smoke impact area. If there are smoke-sensitive targets within this critical zone burning is not recommended under the current prescription.
The other two zones show potential, but much less probable smoke impact areas. The critical zone represents the first tenth of the screening distance for the proposed burn. The orange zone represents from 0.1-0.5 of the screening distance and the yellow zone represents the last half of the screening distance. Consideration of targets within these regions as smoke sensitive is a judgement call based upon their degree of sensitivity and the ambient air quality conditions.