Promoting the health of California’s natural and working lands is paramount to ensuring that these lands sequester carbon and enhance public health benefits. Building on previous CARB-funded research on health benefits of natural and working lands, this project will 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. This work will build on existing ecosystem, health, and air quality models and data that assess future wildfire emissions under various climate and management scenarios. The priority for the analysis will be to develop streamlined methods to quantify the health benefits of future statewide management strategies in forests, shrublands, and grasslands under climate change scenarios from 2025 to 2045. The analysis will quantify annual statewide and regional estimates of future health impacts given pre-developed estimates of wildfire emissions that incorporate multiple climate and management scenarios. Multiple health endpoints beyond mortality and cardiac and respiratory impacts such as expanded birth outcomes and mental health will be investigated for inclusion. The project will include an analysis of the health outcomes by race/ethnicity and other vulnerable groups. The final product will be capable of providing support for natural and working land management to reduce the risk of wildfire by quantifying the health benefits from these strategies.
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