TSD-1b 

Processing of Biogenic Emissions for OTC / MANE-VU 

Modeling 

Bureau of Air Quality Analysis and Research 

Division of Air Resources 

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation 

Albany, NY 12233 

September 19, 2006 
Biogenic emissions for the time period from January 1, 2002 – December 31, 2002 were 

calculated by NYSDEC using the Biogenic Emissions Inventory System (BEIS) version 

3.12 integrated within SMOKE2.1. General information about BEIS is available at 

http://www.epa.gov/AMD/biogen.html while documentation about biogenic emissions 

processing within SMOKE2.1 is available at 

http://cf.unc.edu/cep/empd/products/smoke/version2.1/html/ch06s10.html and 

http://cf.unc.edu/cep/empd/products/smoke/version2.1/html/ch06s17.html . Note that the 

SMOKE documentation refers to BEIS3.09 and has not yet been updated for BEIS3.12. 

This affects the number of species modeled as well as the use of different speciation 

profiles. However, the general processing approach has not changes from BEIS3.09 to 

BEIS3.12. In short, this processing approach is as follows and was utilized by NYSDEC 

for its biogenic emission processing for 8-hr ozone and PM2.5 modeling: 

1. Normbeis3 reads gridded land use data and emissions factors and produces gridded 

normalized biogenic emissions for 34 species/compounds. The gridded land use 

includes 230 different land use types. Both summer and winter emissions factors for 

each species/compound are provided for each of the 230 land use types. On output, 

Normbeis3 generates a file B3GRD which contains gridded summer and winter 

emission fluxes for the modeling domain that are normalized to 30 °C and a 

photosynthetic active radiation (PAR) of 1000 μmol/m2

s. In addition, gridded 

summer and winter leaf area indices (LAI) are also written to B3GRD. 

2. Tmpbeis3 reads the gridded, normalized emissions file B3GRD and meteorological 

data from the MCIP-processed MM5 meteorological fields generated by the 

University of Maryland for MANE-VU/OTC modeling. Specifically, the following 

MM5/MCIP meteorological variables are used by Tmpbeis3 to compute hourspecific, gridded biogenic emissions from the normalized emission fluxed contained 

in B3GRD: layer-1 air temperature (“TA”), layer-1 pressure (“PRES”), total 

incoming solar radiation at the surface (“RGRND”), and convective (“RC”) and 

non-convective (“RN”) rainfall. Additionally, the emissions for the 34 

species/compounds modeled by BEIS3.12 are converted to CO, NO, and the CB-IV 
VOC species utilized in CMAQ via the use of the BEIS3.12-CB-IV speciation 

profile. In adition, an optional seasonal switch file, BIOSEASON, was utilized to 

decide whether to use summer or winter emissions factors for any given grid cell on 

any given day. This file was generated by the SMOKE2.1 utility Metscan based on 

MM5 layer-1 air temperatures to determine the date of the last spring frost and first 

fall frost at each grid cell. Summer emission factors are used by Tmpbeis3 for the 

time period between the last spring frost and first fall frost at any given grid cell, 

and winter emission factors are used for the remaining time period. Documentation 

for the Metscan utility is available at 

http://cf.unc.edu/cep/empd/products/smoke/version2.1/html/ch05s07.html . An 

animated GIF file showing the BIOSEASON file used by NYSDEC can be found at 

ftp://ftp.dec.state.ny.us/dar/air_research/chogrefe/biog_reports/b3season_movie.gif

3. For reporting purposes, the hourly, speciated, gridded emissions were aggregated to 

the county level for each day. For any given grid cell, emissions are distributed 

among the counties intersecting this grid cell in proportion to the area of each of 

these counties within the grid cell. The area gridding surrogates needed for this 

aggregration are based on a file obtained from EPA via 

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/emch/spatial/new/bgpro.12km_041604.us.gz followed 

by windowing for the MANE-VU/OTC modeling domain.