What is the Changing Risk and Burden of Wildfire in the United States?
A new study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) is predicting a grim future for wildfires and the resulting toxic smoke.
Over the past four decades, burned area from wildfires has roughly quadrupled in the United States. This rapid growth has been driven by a number of factors, including the accumulation of fuels due to a legacy of fire suppression over the last century and a more recent increase in fuel aridity shown for the western United States), a trend which is expected to continue as the climate warms.
These increases have happened parallel to a substantial rise in the number of houses in the wildland–urban interface (WUI). Using data on the universe of home locations across the United States and updated national land cover maps, we update earlier studies and estimate that there are now ∼49 million residential homes in the WUI, a number that has been increasing by roughly 350,000 houses per year over the last two decades. Read More...