More smoke today for less smoke tomorrow?
Prescribed fire is being promoted as an important tool for mitigating wildfire risk on private and public lands. An anecdote that is often repeated is that prescribed fire today will reduce the amount of wildfire smoke in the future. However, the science does not exist to understand how the short-term health effects from prescribed smoke exposure compare to future health effects from wildfire smoke exposure. In a recent publication, scientists structure an initial attempt at a potential research roadmap, in hopes that it will spur additional discussions to help create a full research agenda.
Pursuing such an agenda will require collaborations between researchers in public health, epidemiology, forestry, fire science, economics, public policy, public administration and related fields. Importantly, researchers, forest planners and prescribed fire practitioners can work together to develop relevant research questions and identify programmatic and policy priorities based on scientific evidence that is inclusive of public health and social equity considerations. To understand the health tradeoffs between prescribed and wildfire smoke exposure, we should consider three research areas: the health impacts of prescribed fire smoke exposure; the expected health benefits of prescribed fire; and the distributional impacts of prescribed and wildfire smoke exposures.