Wildfire Impacts on Human Health and Mobility

Maximilian Stiefel
Ethan J. Sharygin, University of Washington, Seattle
Mathew Hauer, Florida State University

Our study aims to measure indirect losses from wildfire hazards. Although this work exists in a national context in which wildfires and related hazards capture greater amounts of our attention and resources, we limit our geographic scope to California. We break our inquiry into three related research questions: 1) how do wildfire disasters influence population settlement patterns and processes; 2) what are the population health impacts from wildfires; and 3) will climate change increase wildfire losses related to population health and displacement? Our overarching hypothesis is that wildfire disaster-related losses extend beyond property damage and mortality, they do so in a meaningful way, and these indirect losses will increase over time in both scope and magnitude. Meaningful for the purposes of this research can be represented as an issue of equity, whereupon a loss qualifies as such if its distribution disproportionately impacts underprivileged and disenfranchised population groups.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 11. Health & Mortality 2