Research Database
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18
Exploring spatial heterogeneity in synergistic effects of compound climate hazards: Extreme heat and wildfire smoke on cardiorespiratory hospitalizations in California
Year: 2024
Extreme heat and wildfire smoke events are increasingly co-occurring in the context of climate change, especially in California. Extreme heat and wildfire smoke may have synergistic effects on population health that vary over space. We leveraged high-resolution satellite and monitoring data to quantify spatially varying compound exposures to extreme heat and wildfire smoke in California (2006–2019) at ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) level. We found synergistic effects between extreme heat and wildfire smoke on daily cardiorespiratory hospitalizations at the state level. We also found spatial…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Bacterial Emission Factors: A Foundation for the Terrestrial-Atmospheric Modeling of Bacteria Aerosolized by Wildland Fires
Year: 2024
Wildland fire is a major global driver in the exchange of aerosols between terrestrial environments and the atmosphere. This exchange is commonly quantified using emission factors or the mass of a pollutant emitted per mass of fuel burned. However, emission factors for microbes aerosolized by fire have yet to be determined. Using bacterial cell concentrations collected on unmanned aircraft systems over forest fires in Utah, USA, we determine bacterial emission factors (BEFs) for the first time. We estimate that 1.39 × 1010 and 7.68 × 1011 microbes are emitted for each Mg of biomass consumed…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Clearing the air: evaluating institutions’ social media health messaging on wildfire and smoke risks in the US Pacific Northwest
Year: 2024
BackgroundWildfire smoke contributes substantially to the global disease burden and is a major cause of air pollution in the US states of Oregon and Washington. Climate change is expected to bring more wildfires to this region. Social media is a popular platform for health promotion and a need exists for effective communication about smoke risks and mitigation measures to educate citizens and safeguard public health.MethodsUsing a sample of 1,287 Tweets from 2022, we aimed to analyze temporal Tweeting patterns in relation to potential smoke exposure and evaluate and compare institutions’ use…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mortality Burden From Wildfire Smoke Under Climate Change
Year: 2024
Wildfire activity has increased in the US and is projected to accelerate under future climate change. However, our understanding of the impacts of climate change on wildfire smoke and health remains highly uncertain. We quantify the past and future mortality burden in the US due to wildfire smoke fine particulate matter (PM2.5). We construct an ensemble of statistical and machine learning models that link variation in climate to wildfire smoke PM2.5, and empirically estimate smoke PM2.5-mortality relationships using georeferenced data on all recorded deaths in the US from 2006 to 2019. We…
Publication Type: Report
A Preliminary Case Study on the Compounding Effects of Local Emissions and Upstream Wildfires on Urban Air Pollution
Year: 2024
Interactions between urban and wildfire pollution emissions are active areas of research, with numerous aircraft field campaigns and satellite analyses of wildfire pollution being conducted in recent years. Several studies have found that elevated ozone and particulate pollution levels are both generally associated with wildfire smoke in urban areas. We measured pollutant concentrations at two Utah Division of Air Quality regulatory air quality observation sites and a local hot spot (a COVID-19 testing site) within a 48 h period of increasing wildfire smoke impacts that occurred in Salt Lake…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Factors Associated with Concurrent Tobacco Smoking and Heavy Drinking within a Women Firefighters’ Sample
Year: 2024
Studies showed that tobacco use and excessive alcohol consumption frequently occur, and both are significant causes of preventable morbidity and mortality. Data were collected as part of a national online study of the health of women in the fire service. Multinomial logistic regression was employed to determine factors associated with smoking and drinking characteristics. A total of 2330 women firefighters completed questions regarding tobacco and alcohol use; 3.2% (n = 75) were concurrent users, 0.9% (n = 22) were smokers only, 49.4% (n = 1150) were heavy drinkers only, and 46.5% (n = 1083)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mortality attributable to PM 2.5 from wildland fires inCalifornia from 2008 to 2018
Year: 2024
In California, wildfire risk and severity have grown substantially in the last several decades. Research has characterized extensive adverse health impacts from exposure to wildfire-attributable fine particulate matter (PM2.5), but few studies have quantified long-term outcomes, and none have used a wildfire-specific chronic dose-response mortality coefficient. Here, we quantified the mortality burden for PM2.5 exposure from California fires from 2008 to 2018 using Community Multiscale Air Quality modeling system wildland fire PM2.5 estimates. We used a concentration-response function for PM2…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A model for rapid PM2.5 exposure estimates in wildfire conditions using routinely available data: rapidfire v0.1.3
Year: 2024
Urban smoke exposure events from large wildfires have become increasingly common in California and throughout the western United States. The ability to study the impacts of high smoke aerosol exposures from these events on the public is limited by the availability of high-quality, spatially resolved estimates of aerosol concentrations. Methods for assigning aerosol exposure often employ multiple data sets that are time-consuming to create and difficult to reproduce. As these events have gone from occasional to nearly annual in frequency, the need for rapid smoke exposure assessments has…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Limited availability of health risk communication related to community smoke exposure from prescribed burns in the United States: a review
Year: 2024
Prescribed burns are used to maintain wildland ecosystems and decrease fuel loads and associated wildfire hazard. Prescribed burns may produce enough smoke to cause adverse health outcomes. The aim of this review is to understand what communication materials exist for disseminating health risk information related to prescribed burn smoke and challenges to developing such communication. We examined United States peer-reviewed literature from PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases and conducted an environmental scan of grey literature including materials from federal, and several US state…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Quantifying wildland fire resources deployed during the compound threat of COVID-19
Year: 2024
Fire agencies across the United States must make complex resource allocation decisions to manage wildfires using a national network of shared firefighting resources. Firefighters play a critical role in suppressing fires and protecting vulnerable communities. However, they are exposed to health and safety risks associated with fire, smoke inhalation, and infectious disease transmission. The COVID-19 pandemic further complicated these risks, prompting fire agencies to propose resource management adaptations to minimize COVID-19 exposure and transmission. It is unclear if and how the pandemic…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mental Health and Traumatic Occupational Exposure in Wildland Fire Dispatchers
Year: 2024
Wildland fire dispatchers play a key role in wildland fire management and response organization; however, to date, wildland fire studies have largely focused on the physical hazards and, to a lesser extent, mental health hazards of wildland firefighting operational personnel, and dispatcher studies have primarily focused on 911 and police dispatchers. Studies of other dispatchers have provided some limited insight into potential strains impacting this workforce, including work-related fatigue, burnout, and traumatic exposure. However, the specific job hazards that are faced by wildland fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Metals in Wildfire Suppressants
Year: 2024
Frequent and severe wildfires have led to increased application of fire suppression products (long-term fire retardants, water enhancers, and Class A foams) in the American West. While fire suppressing products used on wildfires must be approved by theU.S. Forest Service, portions of their formulations are trade secrets.Increased metals content in soils and surface waters at the wildland-urban interface has been observed after wildfires but has primarily been attributed to ash deposition or anthropogenic impact from nearby urban areas. In this study, metal concentrations in several fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire Smoke Exposure and Incident Dementia
Year: 2024
Importance: Long-term exposure to total fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a recognized dementia risk factor, but less is known about wildfire-generated PM2.5, an increasingly common PM2.5 source. Objective: To assess the association between long-term wildfire and nonwildfire PM2.5 exposure and risk of incident dementia. Design, Setting, and Participants: This open cohort study was conducted using January 2008 to December 2019 electronic health record (EHR) data among members of Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC), which serves…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Bridging scales for landscape-level wildfire adaptation: A case study of the Kittitas Fire Adapted Communities Coalition
Year: 2024
Federal-level strategies or guidance for addressing wildfire risk encourage adaptation activities that span progressively larger scales, often focusing on landscape-level action that necessitates coordination between decision-makers and socially diverse communities. Collaborative organizations are increasingly explored as one approach for coordinating local efforts that address wildfire risk and adaptation, offering a platform for scaling and adjusting federal and state guidance that align with the needs of local landscapes. We conducted semi-structured interviews with members and supporters…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Factors influencing wildfire management decisions after the 2009 US federal policy update
Year: 2024
Background
The decision making process undertaken during wildfire responses is complex and prone to uncertainty. In the US, decisions federal land managers make are influenced by numerous and often competing factors.
Aims
To assess and validate the presence of decision factors relevant to the wildfire decision making context that were previously known and to identify those that have emerged since the US federal wildfire policy was updated in 2009.
Methods
Interviews were conducted across the US while wildfires were actively burning to elucidate time-of-fire decision factors. Data…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Application of Participatory Process Mapping to Evaluate Environmental Decision-Making and Implementation
Year: 2024
Environmental governance outcomes hinge on the design and implementation of management decisions. Yet, available research methodologies can be limited in their ability to capture the complexity of decision-making and implementation processes and in turn predict and explain environmental governance outcomes. We present participatory process mapping as a method for examining the pathways that emerge and evolve over time that result in natural resource management decisions and on-the-ground outcomes, as perceived by participants in collaborative processes. The approach leverages a large-N…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Demand for Information for Wildland Fire Management
Year: 2024
Significant resources have been devoted to increasing the supply of data and information products for wildland fire management. There has been comparatively less emphasis on understanding the demand for these products. There are large differences in the number of information sources that fire managers use in decision making. We developed a value-of-information model for wildland fire managers to formulate hypotheses about what factors drive these differences. Data from a comprehensive internet survey targeting a well-defined population of the Southwest wildland fire managers are used to test…
Publication Type: Journal Article
An optimization model to prioritize fuel treatments within a landscape fuel break network
Year: 2024
We present a mixed integer programming model for prioritizing fuel treatments within a landscape fuel break network to maximize protection against wildfires, measured by the total fire size reduction or the sum of Wildland Urban Interface areas avoided from burning. This model uses a large dataset of simulated wildfires in a large landscape to inform fuel break treatment decisions. Its mathematical formulation is concise and computationally efficient, allowing for customization and expansion to address more complex and challenging fuel break management problems in diverse landscapes. We…
Publication Type: Journal Article