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How to measure the economic health cost of wildfires – A systematic review of the literature for northern America

Year of Publication
2020
Publication Type

There has been an increasing interest in the economic health cost from smoke exposure from wildfires in thepast 20 years, particularly in the north-western USA that is reflected in an emergent literature. In this review, we provide anoverview and discussion of studies since 2006 on the health impacts of wildfire smoke and of approaches for the estimationof the associated economic cost.

Multitemporal LiDAR improves estimates of fire severity in forested landscapes

Year of Publication
2018
Publication Type

Landsat-based fire severity maps have limited ecological resolution, which can hinder assessments of change to specific resources. Therefore, we evaluated the use of pre- and post-fire LiDAR, and combined LiDAR with Landsat-based relative differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (RdNBR) estimates, to increase the accuracy and resolution of basal area mortality estimation.

Estimating post-fire debris-flow hazards prior to wildfire using a statistical analysis of historical distributions of fire severity from remote sensing data

Year of Publication
2018
Publication Type

Following wildfire, mountainous areas of the western United States are susceptible to debris flow during intense rainfall. Convective storms that can generate debris flows in recently burned areas may occur during or immediately after the wildfire, leaving insufficient time for development and implementation of risk mitigation strategies.