ANN ARBOR - Compiling years of data, and using what they already know, Michigan Technological University scientists are taking climate and wildfire research to a new level.

Last month, the Michigan Tech Research Institute team of scientists received a $452,000 grant it plans to use to study the impact of climate change on wildfires, among other items.

"The project is to look at the impacts of fire on respiratory health, wildfires in particular," said Nancy French, senior research scientist at the Michigan Tech Research Institute, based in Ann Arbor, and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources.

The grant is from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Health Institutes of Health and is a grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. For a two-year period, the project will be granted more than $800,000, French said.

Teaming with the San Diego County Health Department, while doing research in San Diego, the team plans to use information from the health department from people who have reported asthma attacks and heart conditions before, during and after fires, she said.

"My expertise is in fire emissions," she said. "We're trying to connect what we have from emissions during the fires to how much we have for increases in health concerns."

The project has several components, including estimating the emissions - the amount of smoke - that comes from a fire.

French said fires that have become famous in California over the last couple of years, specifically in 2003 and 2006, will be studied.

A team of experts was gathered to participate in the project, French said, all contributing in different ways.

Shiliang Wu, an assistant professor of geological and mining engineering and sciences at Michigan Tech is going to use a computer model and watch where the smoke goes using wind information.

"These are computer models that are very complex and they can use information during the fire and tell us where the smoke is going," she said.

Tyler Erickson, a research scientist with the team, is a geostatistician who looks at statistics in geospacial waves, or in other words, how patterns in the spacial sense are viewed.

"We have an expert at the University of Maryland, named Tatiana Loboda, who is an expert in fire risk modeling," French said.

Loboda, from the department of geography at the University of Maryland, will be analyzing future climate possibilities and helping to understand what the conditions may be like in the future to determine whether there will be more fires and more severe fires to come.

This is the first time anyone has looked into how influential fires on specific locations for health are, French said.

"Although we are doing this in San Diego, we hope to develop a methodology and an understanding that can be transported to other cities that have issues with wildfires and pollution and health," she said.

Stacey Kukkonen can be reached at skukkonen@mininggazette.com.