Environmental justice and U.S. Forest Service hazardous fuels reduction: A spatial method for impact assessment of federal resource management actions

Adams, Mark D. O.; Charnley, Susan

doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2017.12.014

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…As indicated, prescribed burns are conducted according to specific guidelines that consider meteorological and other factors. These factors equal, burns conducted by public agencies sometimes involve subjective decisions [6] that may result in smoke exposure to communities that voice fewer complaints about smoke or that have less political and social influence. Rural minority communities typically have less persuasion in such situations [54].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Exceedance levels notwithstanding, if considered from the viewpoint of wildfire mitigation, an argument could be made that prescribed burns actually enhance environmental justice for nearby populations. As discussed, the chances of larger, more severe wildfire is lessened on properties that are burned regularly, and this can of benefit to environmental justice populations [6]. We certainly do not dispute that wildfire risk is reduced by prescribed burn applications; however, framing prescribed burning only in terms of an environmental benefit does not address the possible smoke hazards from prescribed fire.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In most cases, these studies focus on pollutants from urban or urban-proximate manufacturing facilities, given the concentration of racial and ethnic minority populations in urban centers [3,4,5]. Less research in the U.S. has emphasized human population exposure to pollution from land management activities such as prescribed burning that typically occur in rural contexts [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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African American Exposure to Prescribed Fire Smoke in Georgia, USA

Gaither

Afrin

Garcia–Menendez

et al. 2019

IJERPH

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Our project examines the association between percent African American and smoke pollution in the form of prescribed burn-sourced, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the U.S. state of Georgia for 2018. (1) Background: African Americans constitute 32.4% of Georgia’s population, making it the largest racial/ethnic minority group in the state followed by Hispanic Americans at 9.8%. African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and lower wealth groups are more likely than most middle and upper income White Americans to be exposed to environmental pollutants. This is true because racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in urban areas where pollution is more concentrated. As a point of departure, we examine PM2.5 concentrations specific to prescribed fire smoke, which typically emanates from fires occurring in rural or peri-urban areas. Two objectives are specified: a) examine the association between percent African American and PM2.5 concentrations at the census tract level for Georgia, and b) identify emitters of PM2.5 concentrations that exceed National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for the 24-h average, i. e., >35 µg/m3. (2) Methods: For the first objective, we estimate a spatial Durbin error model (SDEM) where pollution concentration (PM2.5) estimates for 1683 census tracts are regressed on percent of the human population that is African American or Hispanic; lives in mobile homes; and is employed in agriculture and related occupations. Also included as controls are percent evergreen forest, percent mixed evergreen/deciduous forest, and variables denoting lagged explanatory and error variables, respectively. For the second objective, we merge parcel and prescribed burn permit data to identify landowners who conduct prescribed fires that produce smoke exceeding the NAAQS. (3) Results: Percent African American and mobile home dweller are positively related to PM2.5 concentrations; and government and non-industrial private landowners are the greatest contributors to exceedance levels (4) Conclusions: Reasons for higher PM2.5 concentrations in areas with higher African American and mobile home percent are not clear, although we suspect that neither group is a primary contributor to prescribed burn smoke but rather tend to live proximate to entities, both public and private, that are. Also, non-industrial private landowners who generated prescribed burn smoke exceeding NAAQS are wealthier than others, which suggests that African American and other environmental justice populations are less likely to contribute to exceedance levels in the state.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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African American Exposure to Prescribed Fire Smoke in Georgia, USA

Gaither

Afrin

Garcia–Menendez

et al. 2019

IJERPH

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“…Additionally, we utilize Census boundaries to more directly attribute results to the city or township in which they were identified. We hope that this in turn provides an opportunity to encourage local political action which may promote environmental justice in spite of data aggregation biases [49][50][51][52].…”

Section: Research Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging the Gap: Analyzing the Relationship between Environmental Justice Awareness on Twitter and Socio-Environmental Factors Using Remote Sensing and Big Data

Knoble,

2023

Remote Sensing

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Mounting awareness of the discriminatory distribution of environmental factors has increasingly placed environmental justice at the forefront of discussions on sustainable development, but responses to these disparities are often too little, too late. Remote sensing has emerged as a potential solution to this problem, capitalizing on the ability to capture high-resolution, spatially explicit data in near-real time. However, a conventional reliance on physical measurements and surface-level analyses risks overlooking the experiences and perceptions of affected communities. It is against this backdrop that the potential integration of remote sensing imagery and socially sensed big data such as social media data assumes a novel and promising role. This study aims to discern the feasibility, opportunities, and implications of integrating the spatial insights provided by remote sensing with the experiential narratives shared on social media platforms, bridging the gap between objective environmental data and community-driven perspectives. We explore this subject in two ways, analyzing the geographic relationship between environmental justice Tweets and environmental justice factors, and reviewing Tweets produced during an extensive wildfire. Remote sensing indexes for green and blue space were reviewed and tested, selecting the measures of best fit to act as independent variables alongside traditional environmental justice factors in the broader analysis. Results from regression models indicate a negative relationship between the number of Tweets utilizing environmental justice relevant terms and the presence of ecosystem services as captured by an NDMI, suggesting a broad awareness of injustice and a relationship between remote sensing and social media. However, there is simultaneously a negative relationship between socially vulnerable populations and Tweets with environmental justice words. This suggests that generally, there is discussion on Twitter about injustice when resources are not present, but the voices of vulnerable populations are often less visible, either as a result of urban bias or a lack of concern for injustices due to habitual ignorance. Our study demonstrates the potential for integrating remote sensing imagery and social sensing data to play a substantial role in detecting injustices and corroborating data collected through community science initiatives.

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“…Moreover, the framework provides a foundation for communication and coordination with external agencies and partners and for national-scale reporting and monitoring of outcome-based performance measures related to community risk.Wildfire risk to developed areas has received substantial attention from the research community. Researchers have developed various schemata to define and map the WUI (Bento-Goncalves and Vieira 2020;Lampin-Maillet et al 2010;Modugno et al 2016;Radeloff et al 2005) and assess fire hazard in relation to biophysical factors and social vulnerability(Adams and Charnley 2018;Carroll and Paveglio 2016;Evers et al 2019;Paveglio et al 2015;Wigtil et al 2016). However, most existing WUI classification schemes rely solely on in-situ factors such as structure location and surrounding vegetation cover (but seePrice and Bradstock 2013) for measuring wildfire risk(Bar Massada et al 2009;Bento-Goncalves and Vieira 2020;Chas-Amil et al…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and Application of the Fireshed Registry

Ager

Day

Ringo

et al. 2021

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The Fireshed Registry is an interactive geospatial data portal providing access to data describing past, present, and future trends regarding wildfire exposure to communities and forest and fuel management. The registry employs a nested spatial framework that organizes landscape variation in wildfire risk to developed areas into containers or "firesheds" and displays these data on a background of maps on management and disturbances, including past and predicted wildfire events and their potential impacts. It was built in close cooperation with USDA Forest Service staff and establishes a nationally consistent, all-lands, scalable framework for classifying fireshed conditions in terms of underlying wildfire transmission and the potential to mitigate exposure and risk. Foremost, the framework provides a foundation for communication and coordination with external agencies and partners for cross-boundary collaboration and can potentially improve agency national reporting and monitoring of programs. The registry provides the Forest Service with a planning framework for tracking changes in fireshed conditions with respect to wildfire exposure at forest, regional, and national scales. We describe the process of building the system, sources of data, and its application within the agency for decision support and reporting for multiple ongoing programs related to forest and landscape management.

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Environmental justice and U.S. Forest Service hazardous fuels reduction: A spatial method for impact assessment of federal resource management actions

Cited by 12 publications

References 52 publications

African American Exposure to Prescribed Fire Smoke in Georgia, USA

African American Exposure to Prescribed Fire Smoke in Georgia, USA

Bridging the Gap: Analyzing the Relationship between Environmental Justice Awareness on Twitter and Socio-Environmental Factors Using Remote Sensing and Big Data

Development and Application of the Fireshed Registry

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