Citation

McConnell K, Fussell E, Dewaard J, Whitaker S, Curtis KJ, St Denis L, Balch J, Price K. Nat. Commun. 2024; 15(1): e6631.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-50630-4

PMID

39103334

Abstract

The scale of wildfire impacts to the built environment is growing and will likely continue under rising average global temperatures. We investigate whether and at what destruction threshold wildfires have influenced human mobility patterns by examining the migration effects of the most destructive wildfires in the contiguous U.S. between 1999 and 2020. We find that only the most extreme wildfires (258+ structures destroyed) influenced migration patterns. In contrast, the majority of wildfires examined were less destructive and did not cause significant changes to out- or in-migration. These findings suggest that, for the past two decades, the influence of wildfire on population mobility was rare and operated primarily through destruction of the built environment.

Language: en

Keywords

Humans; United States; Population Dynamics; *Human Migration; *Wildfires