Researchers found a high fire risk for socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhoods in the American West.
By 2060, the number of buildings threatened by wildfires in the United States could nearly triple, according to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. On the current trajectory, the West could see 1 billion hectares of land destroyed and the East could see a five-fold increase in burned areas, Jake Bolster writes for Inside Climate News.
The researchers also found a high fire risk for socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhoods in the American West. “With fast-moving fires increasingly pushing into urban spaces, [Virginia Iglesias, the paper’s lead author] said that socioeconomically vulnerable communities ‘may not have the resources for mitigation. Insurance may be more precarious and recovery if a fire hits might be much more difficult, if not impossible,’” Inside Climate News reports.
Grasslands in the Central U.S. may also see a sharp increase in fire activity, with as many as 111 million hectares at risk of burning.
Read the full story: US Buildings Lost to Wildfires Could Triple By 2060
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