The unequal vulnerability of communities of color to wildfire

Globally, environmental disasters impact billions of people and cost trillions of dollars in damage, and their impacts are often felt most acutely by minority and poor communities. Wildfires in the U.S. have similarly outsized impacts on vulnerable communities, though the ethnic and geographic distr...

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Vydané v:	PloS one Ročník 13; číslo 11; s. e0205825
Hlavní autori:	Davies, Ian P., Haugo, Ryan D., Robertson, James C., Levin, Phillip S.
Médium:	Journal Article
Jazyk:	English
Vydavateľské údaje:	United States Public Library of Science 02.11.2018 Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Predmet:	At risk populations Bilingualism Census Censuses Disaster relief Disasters Earth Sciences Earthquakes Ecology and Environmental Sciences Emergency preparedness Engineering and Technology Environmental impact Evacuations & rescues Geographical distribution Hazards Homeowners Hurricanes Impact damage Internet Landscape Low income areas Low income groups Minority & ethnic groups People and places Physical Sciences Public health Research and Analysis Methods Social Sciences Wildfires United States > US California
ISSN:	1932-6203, 1932-6203
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Shrnutí:	Globally, environmental disasters impact billions of people and cost trillions of dollars in damage, and their impacts are often felt most acutely by minority and poor communities. Wildfires in the U.S. have similarly outsized impacts on vulnerable communities, though the ethnic and geographic distribution of those communities may be different than for other hazards. Here, we develop a social-ecological approach for characterizing fire vulnerability and apply it to >70,000 census tracts across the United States. Our approach incorporates both the wildfire potential of a landscape and socioeconomic attributes of overlying communities. We find that over 29 million Americans live with significant potential for extreme wildfires, a majority of whom are white and socioeconomically secure. Within this segment, however, are 12 million socially vulnerable Americans for whom a wildfire event could be devastating. Additionally, wildfire vulnerability is spread unequally across race and ethnicity, with census tracts that were majority Black, Hispanic or Native American experiencing ca. 50% greater vulnerability to wildfire compared to other census tracts. Embracing a social-ecological perspective of fire-prone landscapes allows for the identification of areas that are poorly equipped to respond to wildfires.
Bibliografia:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 14 content type line 23 Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:	1932-6203 1932-6203
DOI:	10.1371/journal.pone.0205825