Bushfires, Human Health Economics, and Pyrogeography

Abstract

Bushfires (landscape fires) are a key Earth system process that affects humans and our societies and economies. In a recent article, we explored the coupling of humans to landscape fire through the lens of human health impacts of bushfire smoke. We noted that such an approach demands recognition of the indirect impacts and costs of bushfires that cannot be captured by simplistic proxies such as deaths directly attributable to a fire front. Evaluation of direct and indirect economic costs of bushfire disasters, and bushfire fire management remains a poorly developed research frontier that demands collaboration of expertise from a broad cross‐section of fields that often have limited experience of collaborating together. The need for such synthetic thinking about fire's place on Earth has spawned the discipline of pyrogeography.

Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers

“…The relationship between fire behaviour and fuels dictates the quantity and quality of combustion products. The physical and chemical products of fuel consumption —including smoke, aerosols and volatilized gases— influence the translocation of carbon, nutrients and living organisms, and affect human health (Bowman & Johnston, 2014; Kobziar et al., 2018). Several aspects of smoke and particulate emissions are understudied from an ecological standpoint, including smoke transport of living microorganisms (Kobziar et al., 2018) and the promotion of germination and plant growth by smoke.…”

Focus on changing fire regimes: interactions with climate, ecosystems, and society

“…Looking towards our modern challenge of both adapting to and actively managing fire regimes, Williamson et al (2016a) provide a timely review on the health impacts of prescribed and wild fires. The human health impacts of fire smoke are increasingly recognized (Johnston et al 2012, Bowman and Johnston 2014, Reid et al 2016, Cascio 2018), a fact that can dramatically increase the estimated economic burden of landscape fires (Jones and Berrens 2017, Thomas et al 2017). Prescribed fires are designed to reduce fuel loads and thus the severity of uncontrolled fires, but can also have negative consequences on human health in downwind regions.…”

“…Fires are necessary for the persistence of key ecosystems, continue to be used as a land management tool, and are not going away. But with an ever-increasing human population, continued expansion into wildlands, and changing climate, fires are an acute and increasing danger to our infrastructure, natural and cultural resources, human health, ecosystem resilience, and climate itself (Johnston et al 2012, Ward et al 2012, Bowman and Johnston 2014, Thomas et al 2017. It has never been more important for us to understand the patterns, drivers, and effects of fires across Earth's diverse biomes.…”

A review of challenges to determining and demonstrating efficiency of large fire management

“…Venn and Calkin (2011) identified five primary challenges in estimating economic impacts of wildfire on natural resource values including a lack of scientific understanding on how non-market forest goods and services are affected by wildfire, difficulties in applying benefit transfer methods from other studies, few studies that estimated marginal willingness-to-pay to conserve non-market forest goods and services affected by fire, violation of consumer budget constraints and impediments to estimating indigenous cultural heritage values. Bowman and Johnston (2014) summarised the state of wildland fire (bushfire) economics as follows: 'Evaluation of direct and indirect economic costs of bushfire disasters, and bushfire management remains a poorly developed research frontier that demands collaboration of expertise from a broad cross-section of fields that often have limited experience of collaborating together'.…”

“…We further draw from several review papers focused on related questions of fire impacts, resource valuation, optimisation, fire management operations, fire modelling, uncertainty and risk, and decision support (Bowman and Johnston 2014;Hand et al 2014;Milne et al 2014;Minas et al 2012;Duff and Tolhurst 2015;Martell 2015;Omi 2015;Pacheco et al 2015). We attempt to link insights from these strands of research to identify productive paths forward to improve the efficiency of large fire management.…”