Increasing global human exposure to wildland fires despite declining burned area

Teymoor Seydi, Seyd, Abatzoglou, John T., Jones, Matthew W., Kolden, Crystal A., Filippelli, Gabriel, Hurteau, Matthew D., Aghakouchak, Amir, Luce, Charles H., Miao, Chiyuan and Sadegh, Mojtaba (2025) Increasing global human exposure to wildland fires despite declining burned area. Science, 389 (6762). pp. 826-829. ISSN 0036-8075

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Abstract

Although half of Earth’s population resides in the wildland-urban interface, human exposure to wildland fires remains unquantified. We show that the population directly exposed to wildland fires increased 40% globally from 2002 to 2021 despite a 26% decline in burned area. Increased exposure was mainly driven by enhanced colocation of wildland fires and human settlements, doubling the exposure per unit burned area. We show that population dynamics accounted for 25% of the 440 million human exposures to wildland fires. Although wildfire disasters in North America, Europe, and Oceania have garnered the most attention, 85% of global exposures occurred in Africa. The top 0.01% of fires by intensity accounted for 0.6 and 5% of global exposures and burned area, respectively, warranting enhanced efforts to increase fire resilience in disaster-prone regions.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Funding: This work was supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (grant L21AC10247 to M.S. and J.T.A.), the National Science Foundation (grants OAI-2019762 to J.T.A. and 2429021 to M.S.), Boise State University Healthy Idaho Initiative (M.S.), and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC grant NE/V01417X/1 to M.W.J.). Any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US government.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	sdg 11 - sustainable cities and communities ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/sustainable_cities_and_communities
Faculty \ School:	University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Related URLs:	https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scie...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	03 Nov 2025 16:30
Last Modified:	03 Nov 2025 16:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100877
DOI:	10.1126/science.adu6408

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