The unequal vulnerability of communities of color to wildfire
The unequal vulnerability of communities of color to wildfire
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0205825
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发表时间：
2018-11-02
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Levin, Phillip S.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Davies, Ian P.;Haugo, Ryan D.;Levin, Phillip S.
在全球范围内，环境灾害影响着数十亿人，造成数万亿美元的损失，少数群体和贫困社区往往感受到最强烈的影响。美国的野火对脆弱的社区也有类似的超大影响，尽管这些社区的种族和地理分布可能不同于其他灾害。在这里，我们开发了一种描述火灾脆弱性的社会生态方法，并将其应用于全美7万个人口普查区域。我们的方法结合了景观的野火潜力和覆盖社区的社会经济属性。我们发现，超过2900万美国人生活在极端野火的巨大可能性中，其中大多数是白人，社会经济安全。然而，在这一群体中，有1200万社会脆弱的美国人，对他们来说，野火事件可能是毁灭性的。此外，野火的脆弱性在种族和族裔之间分布不均，黑人、西班牙裔或美洲原住民占多数的人口普查区与其他人口普查区相比，遭受野火的脆弱性高约50%。从社会-生态的角度看待易发生火灾的景观，可以确定哪些地区应对野火装备不足。
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.