Quantifying the smoke-related public health trade-offs of forest management
Prescribed burns can reduce wildfire risk and total smoke, but also create local pollution. Modeling shows moderate burning lowers PM2.5 and asthma impacts, while excessive burning reduces benefits due to added smoke. This framework helps integrate public health into fire management decisions.
Subject Tags
- Forest
- Fire management
- Health
Abstract
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 landscape in the Central Sierra, California. We find that moderate amounts of prescribed burning can decrease wildfire-specific PM2.5 exposures and reduce asthma-related health impacts in the surrounding region; however, the magnitude of that benefit levels off under scenarios with additional prescribed burning because of the added treatment-related smoke burdens. This framework can be applied to other fire-prone landscapes to incorporate public health considerations into forest management planning.
Citation
Schollaert, C.L., Jung, J., Wilkins, J., Alvarado, E., Baumgartner, J., Brun, J., Busch Isaksen, T., Lydersen, J.M., Marlier, M.E., Marshall, J.D. and Masuda, Y.J., 2024. Quantifying the smoke-related public health trade-offs of forest management. Nature Sustainability, 7(2), pp.130-139. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01253-y
TNC Authors
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Kristen Wilson
Lead Forest Scientist, California
The Nature Conservancy
Email: kristen.wilson@tnc.org -
Nicholas Wolff
Climate Change Scientist
The Nature Conservancy