Wildfire Smoke in the United States - Jacob Gellman and Matthew Wibbenmeyer

Wildfire Smoke in the United States Jacob Gellman and Matthew Wibbenmeyer Working Paper 24-04 April 2024 About the Authors Jacob Gellman is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Alaska Anchorage. [...] PM2.5 may also increase the incidence of preterm birth, low birth weight, and infant mortality.3 Economists have studied the impacts of PM2.5 from wildfire smoke because it generates arguably exogenous temporal variation in fine particulate concentrations, allowing them to econometrically separate the health effects of PM2.5 from the effects of variables correlated with both pollution exposure and. [...] Wildfire smoke has accounted for up to 25 percent of PM2.5 in recent years across the United States and up to half in some areas of the western United States (Burke et al. [...] However, as a result of decades of fire exclusion and fuel buildup, fuel treatment needs in the United States are vast; in 2022, the US Forest Service (USFS) estimated that 50 million acres—approximately the area of Nebraska—of public and private land in the western United States needed to be restored over the next 10 years to reduce wildfire hazard in the highest-risk areas. [...] Even with further funding, the size of the current wildfire management workforce may limit the ability to dramatically increase the pace and scale of fuels management, at least in the short term.