In the early years of the next century, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will implement new regulations for the management of atmospheric particulate matter 2.5 microns and less in diameter (PM2.5), tropospheric ozone, and regional haze. These three air quality issues relate directly to forest and agriculture burning. Fire generates PM2.5 and other ozone precursor gases that reduce visibility. Hence, wild and agricultural land management, nationwide, will be subject to new air quality regulations much as industrial and mobile sources have been for the past 25 years.

These new regulations come at a time when managers of public, as well as private, land throughout the United States are developing plans to increase their application of fire as a management tool. Prescribed fire will remain viable as a tool for land managers with these new regulations, but only under a new paradigm of smoke management. This paradigm will include formal "state-approved" Smoke Management Programs, and will of necessity require use of new technologies to predict air quality impacts and minimize emissions. Further, these tools and technologies will be subject to as much public scrutiny as industrial and transportation air pollution sources have been in the past.

Hopefully, these programs will acknowledge that wildland fire is different from more conventional human-caused air pollution sources. They will recognize that the managed use of fire is a far superior option to wildfire from at least public safety and human health perspectives. However, in circumstances where fire is used for primarily economic rather than ecological reasons, procedures to steadily reduce emissions will likely be required.

The Technically Advanced Smoke Estimation Tools (TASET) Project was an effort to develop a structured analysis of information required by land and air resources managers to accomplish improved smoke management. The structure applied is that each task that needs to be performed requires information. Information comes from data and tools that generate and enhance the data.