Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2021
Abstract
As we learn to sustainably coexist with wildfire, there is an urgent need to improve our understanding of its multidimensional impacts on society. To this end, we undertake a nationwide study to estimate how megafires (wildfires > 100,000 acres in size) affect US labor market outcomes in communities located within the flame zone. Both year-of-fire and over-time dynamic impacts are studied between 2010−2017. We find that counties located within a megafire flame zone experience significantly lower per capita wage earnings across multiple sources of earnings data for up to two years after megafire event occurrence. We find preliminary evidence that impacts are nonlinear over megafire size. These results highlight a new dimension of megafire impacts and expand the scope of the potential costs of megafires that should be considered in benefit-cost analyses of wildfire control and suppression decisions, especially along sustainability dimensions.
DOI
10.3390/su13169078
Publisher
MDPI
Repository Citation
Jones, B. A., & McDermott, S. (2021). The local labor market impacts of US megafires. Sustainability, 13(16), Article 9078. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13169078
Publication Information
Sustainability
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.