Journal article 248 views 21 downloads
Climate change greatly escalates forest disturbance risks to US property values
Environmental Research Letters, Volume: 18, Issue: 9, Start page: 094011
Swansea University Author:
Sarah Nicholls
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© 2023 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY 4.0).
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DOI (Published version): 10.1088/1748-9326/ace639
Abstract
Anthropogenic climate change is projected to drive increases in climate extremes and climate-sensitive ecosystem disturbances such as wildfire with enormous economic impacts. Understanding spatial and temporal patterns of risk to property values from climate-sensitive disturbances at national and re...
Published in: | Environmental Research Letters |
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ISSN: | 1748-9326 |
Published: |
IOP Publishing
2023
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Online Access: |
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URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64021 |
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Abstract: |
Anthropogenic climate change is projected to drive increases in climate extremes and climate-sensitive ecosystem disturbances such as wildfire with enormous economic impacts. Understanding spatial and temporal patterns of risk to property values from climate-sensitive disturbances at national and regional scales and from multiple disturbances is urgently needed to inform risk management and policy efforts. Here, we combine models for three major climate-sensitive disturbances (i.e., wildfire, climate stress-driven tree mortality, and insect-driven tree mortality), future climate projections of these disturbances, and high-resolution property values data to quantify the spatiotemporal exposure of property values to disturbance across the contiguous United States (US). We find that property values exposed to these climate-sensitive disturbances increase sharply in future climate scenarios, particularly in existing high-risk regions of the western US, and that novel exposure risks emerge in some currently lower-risk regions such as the southeast and Great Lakes regions. Climate policy that drives emissions towards low-to-moderate climate futures avoids large increases in disturbance risk exposure compared to high emissions scenarios. Our results provide an important large-scale assessment of climate-sensitive disturbance risk to property values to help inform land management and climate adaptation efforts. |
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Keywords: |
Climate change, wildfire, tree mortality, economic impacts, climate policy |
College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
Funders: |
WRLA acknowledges support from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, US National Science Foundation Grants 1802880, 2003017, 2044937, and IOS-2325700. |
Issue: |
9 |
Start Page: |
094011 |