DOI: 10.5061/dryad.9p8cz8wqd
title: Flint Hills, KS PurpleAir PM2.5 data from the 2022 prescribed fire season

description: Prescribed fires (fires intentionally set for mitigation purposes) produce
 pollutants, which have negative effects on human and animal health. One of
 the pollutants produced from fires is fine particulate matter (PM2.5).
 PM2.5 can penetrate deep into the lungs and harm cardiovascular and
 respiratory systems. The Flint Hills region of Kansas experiences
 extensive prescribed burning each spring (March - May). Smoke from
 prescribed fires is often understudied due to a lack of monitoring in the
 rural regions where prescribed burning occurs, as well as the short
 duration and small size of the fires. Our goal was to attribute PM2.5
 concentrations to the prescribed burning in the Flint Hills. To determine
 PM2.5 increases from local burning, we used low-cost PM2.5 sensors
 (PurpleAir) and satellite observations. The Flint Hills were also affected
 by smoke transported from fires in other regions during 2022. We separated
 the transported smoke from smoke from fires in eastern Kansas. Based on
 data from the PurpleAir sensors, we found the 24-hour median PM2.5
 increased by 5.2 µg m-3 on days impacted by smoke from fires in the
 eastern Kansas region compared to days unimpacted by smoke. We found the
 Flint Hills to be the most smoke PM2.5 impacted region compared to other
 regions of Kansas, as observed in satellite products and in situ
 measurements.
description: We recruited participants to deploy 38 PurpleAir monitors
 throughout eastern Kansas to study smoke from prescribed burning from
 March - May 2022. PurpleAir are low-cost sensors (~$300 USD per unit) that
 estimate PM<sub>2.5</sub> concentrations every two minutes. We
 performed a quality check on the raw PM<sub>2.5</sub>
 concentrations from PurpleAir. We took 10-minute averages of all
 measurements. We then removed data with the following conditions: (1)
 temperature &gt; 65 <sup>o</sup>C (0.005 % of
 observations), (2) relative humidity &gt; 100% (0.0001 % of
 observations), (3) channel disagreement &gt; 10% from the average of
 the two channels or 10 µg m<sup>-3</sup> in the absolute
 difference between the channels (3.3% of observations), and (4)
 measurements &gt; 500 µg m<sup>-3</sup> (0.0017% of
 observations). We applied the Barkjohn et al. (2021) correction factor to
 the quality checked PurpleAir field measurements. This correction factor
 reduces bias in PurpleAir PM<sub>2.5</sub> by scaling based on
 the concentrations and relative humidity (https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-4617-2021). Due to continuously erroneous humidity observations for one sensor (PurpleAir ​​1361083), we used humidity observations from a nearby PurpleAir sensor to calculate the PM<sub>2.5</sub> correction factor. After we applied the correction factor, some observations with high humidity and low concentrations became negative. All negative concentrations after the correction factor were set to 0 µg m<sup>-3</sup><sub> </sub>(1.87% of observations). There were two sensors that we could not recover the PM<sub>2.5</sub> measurement from. We are reporting hourly measurements in this dataset. 
description: # PurpleAir PM2.5 Data from the Flint Hills, KS 2022 Field Campaign
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9p8cz8wqd](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.9p8cz8wqd) This dataset includes PM<sub>2.5</sub> concentrations from PurpleAir sensors which were deployed in eastern Kansas to monitor smoke from prescribed fires during March - May 2022. The locations of each monitor are reported and have been rounded for privacy of the monitor hosts. We report hourly averages of the data. For finer temporal resolution, please contact the authors. ## Description of the data and file structure The data is formatted in a comma-separated values file. The following is a description for each column: * "local time" - The timestamp associated with the PurpleAir measurements reported in Central Daylight Time. The format for this column is "Day/Month/Year Hour:Minute". * "temperature" - The temperature that is measured by the PurpleAir BOSCH BME280 reported in degrees Fahrenheit. * "humidity" - The percentage of relative humidity that is measured by the PurpleAir BOSCH BME280. * "Uncorrected_PM25" - The uncorrected PM<sub>2.5</sub> reported in µg m-3. This data has been quality checked, as explained in the data description. * "Corrected_PM25" - The corrected PM<sub>2.5</sub> reported in µg m-3. This data has been quality checked, as explained in the data description as well as corrected using the Barkjohn et al. (2021) correction factor. * "ID" - The identification number for the PurpleAir sensor. * "Latitude" - The latitude of the corresponding PurpleAir measurement site. This value has been rounded to the nearest 100th of a degree. * "Longitude" - The longitude of the corresponding PurpleAir measurement site. This value has been rounded to the nearest 100th of a degree. ## Sharing/Access information The associated manuscript includes measurements from public PurpleAir sensors in the study. Public PurpleAir PM<sub>2.5</sub> concentrations can be downloaded here: [https://www2.purpleair.com/.](https://www2.purpleair.com/.)