California Air Resources Board

Principal Investigator/Author: John Abatzoglou

Contractor: University of California, Merced

Contract Number: 23RD004

Project Status: Active

Relevant CARB Programs: AB 32 Climate Change Scoping Plan

Topic Areas: Air Pollution Exposure, exposure impacts, exposure mitigation, health analysis, Health Effects of Air Pollution, Health & Air Pollution, Wildfire Smoke & Health, Health Risk Assessment, Particulate Matter (PM), PM2.5, Wildfires, Smoke, Wildfire Emission Estimates, Emissions Data, emission reduction strategies, Climate Change, Carbon Neutrality,Natural and Working Lands

Research Summary:

The implementation of natural and working land management strategies impacts public health and the environment. The objective of this project is to develop and expand CARB’s ability to quantify the health benefits from future climate actions that promote healthy forests and other natural lands and reduce the frequency and negative impacts of wildfire events. The University of California, Merced (UCM) and Desert Research Institute (DRI) will build on previous CARB-funded research and existing models and data to develop streamlined methods to quantify the annual health impacts of future wildfire emissions under various climate and management scenarios in forests, shrublands, and grasslands. The research team will conduct a literature review to identify health impact functions for wildfire PM2.5 and develop new health impact functions for perinatal outcomes to be used in the health analysis. The research team will translate CARB-derived wildfire emission scenarios at the ecological unit scale into a fine resolution 2-km grid and use historical climatology and dispersion modeling to develop detailed air quality maps of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations for each scenario. Using the health impact functions and PM2.5 concentrations, the open-source Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program – Community Edition (BenMAP-CE) will be used to quantify the health benefits for each scenario. The results of this project will be used by CARB in the development of future climate policies and implementation of NWL management strategies that maximize health benefits, reduce the risk of wildfire, and promote resilience to climate change.

Keywords: climate change, natural and working land, health benefits, birth outcome, wildfire, PM2.5, climatology, management strategies, BenMAP