2025-08-21 カリフォルニア大学アーバイン校(UCI)
＜関連情報＞
- https://news.uci.edu/2025/08/21/uc-irvine-led-research-team-uncovers-global-wildfire-paradox/
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu6408
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01163-z
焼失面積の減少にもかかわらず、世界的な山火事への人間曝露が増加している Increasing global human exposure to wildland fires despite declining burned area
Seyd Teymoor Seydi, John T. Abatzoglou, Matthew W. Jones, Crystal A. Kolden, […] , and Mojtaba Sadegh
Science Published:21 Aug 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adu6408
Editor’s summary
Wildfires are increasingly destructive to people and property globally as a result of both increased fire activity and human development at the urban-wildland interface. Seydi et al. quantified the number of people exposed to fires (i.e., those living within areas that have burned) at the global scale between 2002 and 2021. Over that period, fire exposure increased by 40% even as burned area declined globally. Almost all of the increase in exposure was in Africa, which accounted for more than 85% of all people directly exposed to wildland fires over the study period. —Bianca Lopez
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.
米国における大規模山火事の人間とインフラへの曝露 Human and infrastructure exposure to large wildfires in the United States
Arash Modaresi Rad,John T. Abatzoglou,Jason Kreitler,Mohammad Reza Alizadeh,Amir AghaKouchak,Nicholas Hudyma,Nicholas J. Nauslar & Mojtaba Sadegh
Nature Sustainability Published:03 July 2023
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01163-z
Abstract
An increasing number of wildfire disasters have occurred in recent years in the United States. Here we demonstrate that cumulative primary human exposure—the population residing within the perimeters of large wildfires—was 594,850 people from 2000 to 2019 across the contiguous United States (CONUS), 82% of which occurred in the western United States. Primary population exposure increased by 125% in the CONUS in the past two decades; it was noted that there were large statistical uncertainties in the trend analysis due to the short study timeline. Population dynamics from 2000 to 2019 alone accounted for 24% of the observed increase rate in human exposure, and an increased wildfire extent drove the majority of the observed trends. In addition, we document the widespread exposure of roads (412,155 km) and transmission powerlines (14,835 km) to large wildfires in the CONUS, with a relative increase of 58% and 70% in the past two decades, respectively. Our results highlight that deliberate mitigation and adaptation efforts to help societies cope with wildfires are ever more needed.
