Issue No. 15 December 1998 In This Issue A Note from the Chair Science Features 2 BIBEX 3 STARE, TRACE-A, and SAFARI 7 Satellite Fire Monitoring 9 EXPRESSO 11 Domestic vs. Wild Fires in Africa 13 Boreal Forest Fire Research 15 GFMC and BIBEX 16 SAFARI-2000 19 BIBEX in the Future IGACtivities homepage IGAC homepage

of the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project G A Note from the IGAC Chair: Guy Brasseur IGAC Project Offices One of the main tasks of IGAC is to facilitate international cooperation within the atmospheric chemistry community, and to coordinate large scientific initiatives such as field campaigns or other projects. To accomplish these tasks, IGAC has established several Project Offices in different parts of the world. The main Core Project Office (CPO) is located at MIT in Cambridge, Mass, USA and is headed by Dr. Alex Pszenny. It forms the center of the IGAC network, and is the official link between the IGAC Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) and the large international group of IGAC scientists. The CPO also serves as an easily accessible source of information about past, current, and future scientific activities. It publishes the IGACtivities newsletter and maintains this web site. A major task for the CPO for the next two years will be to help conduct an integration / synthesis project that will summarize the major accomplishements by our scientific community over the last decade and will provide a strategic view for future research. This effort will be coordinated by Ms. Harriet Barker. The CPO is currently supported by several funding agencies in the US including NSF, NASA, and NOAA. A European IGAC Project Office, headed by Dr. Stanislaw Cieslik is located in Ispra, Italy, at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission (EC). This regional office facilitates the participation of European scientists in IGAC and related activities, and coordinates the EC-sponsored research with IGAC Activities. I am pleased to announce that a new agreement between the European Commission and IGAC was recently signed to support this office for the period covering the 5th EC Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. Another regional IGAC office is located at the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi, India, and is directed by Dr. D.C. Parashar. This office coordinates activities conducted in South Asia (where issues related to global change are receiving increasing attention) and promotes a number of international workshops in the area of atmospheric chemistry. All these offices play a major role in the success of IGAC. The role of the Project Officers is crucial. I would like to thank them for their hard work and their commitment to IGAC and to our discipline. The present issue of IGACtivities focuses on the role of biomass burning in the global and regional budgets of chemical compounds of the atmosphere. Biomass burning, which is often the result of agricultural practices and of other human interventions, is a major source of atmospheric pertubations, particularly in the tropics. Several field campaigns, sponsored by IGAC's Biomass Burning Experiment (BIBEX) Activity, have produced a wealth of new information that is summarized in the following pages. I would like to thank Prof. M.O. Andreae, who recently stepped down as Convenor of BIBEX, and his colleagues for their important contribution to IGAC science. I am sure that BIBEX will continue to thrive under leadership of its new Conveners: Johann Goldammer of the Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie in Mainz, Germany, and Joyce Penner of the University of Michigan in the USA.

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