US Environmental Protection Agency Wildfire Outreach and Research Initiatives
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The US Environmental Protection Agency is leading a coordinated national effort to protect public health and the environment in the face of increasing likelihood of wildfire ignitions, number of large wildfires (> 100,000 acres), and acres burned. In the Smoke-Ready Toolbox, the Agency and partners have prepared guidance to reduce public health risk before a wildfire to educate people about the risks of smoke exposure actions they can take to protect their health. Useful tools like the Smoke Sense app – a crowdsourcing, citizen science research project developed by EPA researchers – is helping to understand the steps people are willing to take to reduce their exposure and develop health risk communication strategies that improve public health when there is wildfire smoke. Focusing on the West Coast and increasing pressure to manage wildfire through controlled burns, the Agency recently completed a comparative assessment of the impacts of prescribed fire versus wildfire and highlights from this comprehensive approach using a western case study will be discussed. Locally, the EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD) is actively engaged in understanding fire effects on health and the environment: we are studying how climate change affects forest heath, wildfire, and forest susceptibility to disturbance (this conference); how fire affects terrestrial and aquatic habitat (this conference); how post-fire products like biochar can be used to remediate contaminated soils; how fire impacts air quality in the Pacific Northwest; and how fires in the Willamette Valley are affecting surface-water quality. The views expressed in this abstract are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The views expressed in this abstract are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.