Research Database
Displaying 41 - 60 of 97
Quantifying the smoke-related public health trade-offs of forest management
Year: 2023
Prescribed burning can mitigate extreme wildfire risk and reduce total smoke emissions. Yet prescribed burns’ emissions may also contribute to smoke exposures in nearby communities. Incorporating public health considerations into forest management planning efforts may help reduce prescribed burn-related exposure impacts. We present a methodological framework linking landscape ecology, air-quality modelling and health impact assessment to quantify the air-quality and health impacts of specific management strategies. We apply this framework to six forest management scenarios proposed for a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
More smoke today for less smoke tomorrow? We need to better understand the public health benefits and costs of prescribed fire
Year: 2022
Rapidly scaling up the use of prescribed fire is being promoted as an important pathway for reducing the growing damages of wildfire events in the United States, including limiting the health impacts from smoke emissions. However, we do not currently have the science needed to understand how the health impacts associated with prescribed fire smoke in the present compare to wildfire smoke exposure in the future. In particular, we lack an understanding of how the potential long-term public health benefits of prescribed fire on future wildfire smoke and health impacts compare to prescribed fire’…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Oregon Wildfire Smoke Communications and Impacts: An Evaluation of the 2020 Wildfire Season
Year: 2022
Oregon Health Authority and the University of Oregon partnered to conduct a survey-based evaluation of wildfire smoke communications and impacts experienced by Oregon residents during the 2020 wildfire season. The purpose of this survey was to (1) understand how Oregonians respond to wildfire smoke and (2) provide an open-source evaluation tool and data to support wildfire smoke communication practitioners in Oregon.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire, Smoke Exposure, Human Health, and Environmental Justice Need to be Integrated into Forest Restoration and Management
Year: 2022
Purpose of Review: Increasing wildfire size and severity across the western United States has created an environmental and social crisis that must be approached from a transdisciplinary perspective. Climate change and more than a century of fire exclusion and wildfire suppression have led to contemporary wildfires with more severe environmental impacts and human smoke exposure. Wildfires increase smoke exposure for broad swaths of the US population, though outdoor workers and socially disadvantaged groups with limited adaptive capacity can be disproportionally exposed. Exposure to wildfire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A Survey onMonitoring ofWild Animals during Fires Using Drones
Year: 2022
Forest fires occur for natural and anthropogenic reasons and affect the distribution, structure, and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Monitoring fires and their impacts on ecosystems is an essential prerequisite for effectively managing this widespread environmental problem. With the development of information technologies, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) are becoming increasingly important in remote monitoring the environment. One of the main applications of drone technology related to nature monitoring is the observation of wild animals. Unmanned aerial vehicles are…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Increasing co-occurrence of fine particulate matter and ground-level ozone extremes in the western United States
Year: 2022
Wildfires and meteorological conditions influence the co-occurrence of multiple harmful air pollutants including fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone. We examine the spatiotemporal characteristics of PM2.5/ ozone co-occurrences and associated population exposure in the western United States (US). The frequency, spatial extent, and temporal persistence of extreme PM2.5/ozone co-occurrences have increased significantly between 2001 and 2020, increasing annual population exposure to multiple harmful air pollutants by ~25 million person-days/year. Using a clustering methodology…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Comparing particulate morphology generated from human- made cellulosic fuels to natural vegetative fuels
Year: 2022
Background: In wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires, particulates from the combustion of both natural vegetative fuels and engineered cellulosic fuels may have deleterious effects on the environment. Aims: The research was conducted to investigate the morphology of the particulate samples generated from the combustion of oriented strand board (OSB). Findings were compared to the particulate samples collected from the combustion of noble-fir branches. Methods: The exposure conditions were varied to induce either smouldering combustion or flaming combustion of the specimens. Particulate samples…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Lifestyle and environmental factors may induce airway and systemic inflammation in firefighters
Year: 2022
Health status depends on multiple genetic and non-genetic factors. Nonheritable factors (such as lifestyle and environmental factors) have stronger impact on immune responses than genetic factors. Firefighters work is associated with exposure to air pollution and heat stress, as well as: extreme physical effort, mental stress, or a changed circadian rhythm, among others. All these factors can contribute to both, short-term and long-term impairment of the physical and mental health of firefighters. Increased levels of some inflammatory markers, such as pro-inflammatory cytokines or C-reactive…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Comparing particulate morphology generated from human-made cellulosic fuels to natural vegetative fuels
Year: 2022
Background: In wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires, particulates from the combustion of both natural vegetative fuels and engineered cellulosic fuels may have deleterious effects on the environment. Aims: The research was conducted to investigate the morphology of the particulate samples generated from the combustion of oriented strand board (OSB). Findings were compared to the particulate samples collected from the combustion of noble-fir branches. Methods: The exposure conditions were varied to induce either smouldering combustion or flaming combustion of the specimens. Particulate samples…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Comparing smoke emissions and impacts under alternative forest management regimes
Year: 2022
Smoke from wildfires has become a growing public health issue around the world but especially in western North America and California. At the same time, managers and scientists recommend thinning and intentional use of wildland fires to restore forest health and reduce smoke from poorly controlled wildfires. Because of the changing climate and management paradigms, the evaluation of smoke impacts needs to shift evaluations from the scale of individual fire events to long-term fire regimes and regional impacts under different management strategies. To confront this challenge, we integrated…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Incorporating place-based values into ecological restoration
Year: 2022
Knowledge of how ecocultural landscapes co-evolved, how they were shaped and maintained by local people, and what processes disturbed the landscape should inform the planning, execution, and significance of restoration projects. Indigenous stewardship has resulted in legacies of diverse and productive ecocultural environments. Often, this stewardship has been guided by place-based values, which are informed by Indigenous knowledge, beliefs of equal respect for all ecosystem components, and conduct that sustains resource productivity. We propose that cultivating place-based values in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Strategies to reduce wildfire smoke in frequently impacted communities in south-western Oregon
Year: 2022
Background: Efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of wildfire smoke have focused on modifying human behaviour to minimise individual exposure, largely accomplished by providing smoke forecasts, monitoring, and consistent public messaging. Aims: To identify a strategy to reduce the amount of wildfire smoke in frequently impacted communities. Methods: We identify frequent air pathways that transport smoke into five communities in south-western Oregon. We present a case study comparing the potential change in the 24-h average PM2.5 concentration between fuels burned during a wildfire which are…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Field measurements of PM2.5 infiltration factor and portable air cleaner effectiveness during wildfire episodes in US residences
Year: 2021
Wildfires have frequently occurred in the western United States (US) during the summer and fall seasons in recent years. This study measures the PM2.5 infiltration factor in seven residences recruited from five dense communities in Seattle, Washington, during a 2020 wildfire episode and evaluates the impacts of HEPA-based portable air cleaner (PAC) use on reducing indoor PM2.5 levels. All residences with windows closed went through an 18-to-24-h no filtration session, with five of seven following that period with an 18-to-24-h filtration session. Auto-mode PACs, which automatically adjust the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland firefighter smoke exposure and risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality
Year: 2019
Wildland firefighters are exposed to wood smoke, which contains hazardous air pollutants, by suppressing thousands of wildfires across the U. S. each year. We estimated the relative risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality from existing PM2.5 exposure-response relationships using measured PM4 concentrations from smoke and breathing rates from wildland firefighter field studies across different exposure scenarios. To estimate the relative risk of lung cancer (LC) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality from exposure to PM2.5 from smoke, we used an existing exposure-response…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wild bee diversity increases with local fire severity in a fire‐prone landscape
Year: 2019
As wildfire activity increases in many regions of the world, it is imperative that we understand how key components of fire‐prone ecosystems respond to spatial variation in fire characteristics. Pollinators provide a foundation for ecological communities by assisting in the reproduction of native plants, yet our understanding of how pollinators such as wild bees respond to variation in fire severity is limited, particularly for forest ecosystems. Here, we took advantage of a natural experiment created by a large‐scale, mixed‐severity wildfire to provide the first assessment of how wild bee…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Air-quality challenges of prescribed fire in the complex terrain and wildland urban interface surrounding Bend, Oregon
Year: 2019
Prescribed fires in forest ecosystems can negatively impact human health and safety by transporting smoke downwind into nearby communities. Smoke transport to communities is known to occur around Bend, Oregon, United States of America (USA), where burning at the wildland–urban interface in the Deschutes National Forest resulted in smoke intrusions into populated areas. The number of suitable days for prescribed fires is limited due to the necessity for moderate weather conditions, as well as wind directions that do not carry smoke into Bend. To better understand the conditions leading to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Assessing relative differences in smoke exposure from prescribed, managed, and full suppression wildland fire
Year: 2019
A novel approach is presented to analyze smoke exposure and provide a metric to quantify health-related impacts. Our results support the current understanding that managing low-intensity fire for ecological benefit reduces exposure when compared to a high-intensity full suppression fire in the Sierra Nevada of California. More frequent use of fire provides an opportunity to mitigate smoke exposure for both individual events and future emission scenarios. The differences in relative exposure between high-intensity, low-intensity, and prescribed burn were significant (P value < 0.01).…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfires as an ecosystem service
Year: 2019
Wildfires are often perceived as destructive disturbances, but we propose that when integrating evolutionary and socioecological factors, fires in most ecosystems can be understood as natural processes that provide a variety of benefits to humankind. Wildfires generate open habitats that enable the evolution of a diversity of shade‐intolerant plants and animals that have long benefited humans. There are many provisioning, regulating, and cultural services that people obtain from wildfires, and prescribed fires and wildfire management are tools for mimicking the ancestral role of wildfires in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A Review of Community Smoke Exposure from Wildfire Compared to Prescribed Fire in the United States
Year: 2018
Prescribed fire, intentionally ignited low-intensity fires, and managed wildfires—wildfires that are allowed to burn for land management benefit—could be used as a land management tool to create forests that are resilient to wildland fire. This could lead to fewer large catastrophic wildfires in the future. However, we must consider the public health impacts of the smoke that is emitted from wildland and prescribed fire. The objective of this synthesis is to examine the differences in ambient community-level exposures to particulate matter (PM2.5) from smoke in the United States in relation…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Towards an understanding of the evolutionary role of fire in animals
Year: 2018
Wildfires underpin the dynamics and diversity of many ecosystems worldwide, and plants show a plethora of adaptive traits for persisting recurrent fires. Many fire-prone ecosystems also harbor a rich fauna; however, knowledge about adaptive traits to fire in animals remains poorly explored. We review existing literature and suggest that fire is an important evolutionary driver for animal diversity because (1) many animals are present in fire-prone landscapes and may have structural and phenotypic characters that contribute to adaptation to these open landscapes; and (2) in some cases, animals…
Publication Type: Journal Article