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The locations of the June and July 1998 wildfires in Florida are shown in red. The St. John's River Water Management District is outlined in black.
Source publication
We modeled and analyzed the economic impacts of the six weeks of large, catastrophic wildfires in northeastern Florida in June and July 1998, among Florida's most devastating in recent history. The result of the unusually strong El NiñoSouthern Oscillation (ENSO) in 1998, the Florida wildfires produced economic impacts of at least $600 million, si...
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Citations
... In addition to the economic loss of timber products caused by wildfires, there are some other costs, such as presuppression costs, suppression costs, property damage, and other socio-economic losses that are not included in this study. Therefore, fires may cause significant negative externalities and social costs through climate change (Butry et al. 2001;Paveglio et al. 2015;Durán-Medraño et al. 2017;Wang et al. 2021). For instance, a study by Bellisario et al. (2017) examined the direct and indirect economic impact of wildfires in California, and the economic damage across all nine counties of the Bay Area was estimated at US$24.6 billion. ...
In Turkiye, insufficient technical standards of the forest roads limit the speed of the fire truck, leading to increase in the arrival time of the initial response team to the fire areas. Improving forest road standards will increase the design speed and expand the accessible forest areas within the critical response time. In this study, the effect of improving forest road standards on expanding accessible forest areas was investigated. Considering the forest areas in Antalya Forestry Regional Directorate in Turkiye, accessible areas by the stationary initial response teams (103) and mobile teams (71) were determined from the existing road network, and then, the possible increase in the accessible forest areas was investigated when the road standards are improved. Within the scope of the study, the impact of mobile teams used in emergencies on forest areas reached during the critical response period was also evaluated. According to the results, in the scenario where current road standards and stationary teams were evaluated, it was determined that only 59.54% of the forest areas could be reached by initial response teams during the critical response time. When the road standards were improved, this rate increased to 71.69%. On the other hand, when the current road standards and stationary and mobile teams were evaluated together, it was determined that initial response teams could reach 70.40% of the forest areas during the critical response time, and if road standards were improved, this rate increased to 78.17%. Also, utilizing mobile teams increased the accessible forest areas within the critical response time by 9.03%. The results have shown that improvements in road standards and the presence of mobile teams have a very effective role in combating forest fires.
... One of the most common natural hazards, with worldwide distribution, is Wild-fires with a significant economic and social cost (e.g. Abedi et al., 2019;Antoniou et al., 2020;Arango et al., 2023Arango et al., , 2024Bedia et al., 2018;Butry et al., 2001;Hysa, 2021;Lin et al., 2023;Martin et al., 2016). Their occurrence has considerably increased during the last years across the world (e.g. ...
... In addition to the economic loss of timber products caused by wildfires, there are some other costs, such as presuppression costs, suppression costs, property damage, and other socio-economic losses that are not included in this study. Therefore, fires may cause significant negative externalities and social costs through climate change (Butry et al. 2001;Paveglio et al. 2015;Durán-Medraño et al. 2017;Wang et al. 2021). For instance, a study by Bellisario et al. (2017) examined the direct and indirect economic impact of wildfires in California, and the economic damage across all nine counties of the Bay Area was estimated at US$24.6 billion. ...
In this study, it was aimed to estimate the economic value of the timber products from the forest stands that are potentially saved from wildfires after improving road standards. The study was implemented in the Alanya Forest Enterprise Directorate (FED) in the Mediterranean city of Antalya, Turkey. In the solution process, the possible increase in the accessible forest areas with improved forest road standards was investigated by using GIS-based network analysis methods. In the next step, the timber production in the forest areas potentially saved from the wildfire was calculated based on parameters such as site index, rotation period, and stand structure. Then, the economic value of timber product types was calculated using market prices. The results indicated that increasing the design speed on improved forest roads reduced the arrival time of firefighting teams to the forests, which consequently increasing the accessible forest areas in critical response time.
... Additionally, it is important to differentiate between building types, as industrial and infrastructure sites generally are better defensible and show greater fire resistance compared to residential areas. Understanding vulnerability requires accounting for the total cost of a wildfire disaster, including suppression costs, disruptions to business and tourism, recovery costs, and ecological impacts [140,141]. It should also consider the physical and socio-economic conditions that limit coping with long-lasting impacts, including the interactions of political, social, and economic factors [142][143][144][145][146]. Fire smoke, an indirect exposure, poses risks to human health [28,29,147], but it was not considered in this study due to challenges in modeling smoke physics (see, for e.g., Chen et al. [148]). ...
... Finally, ecosystem service damages from wildfire can range from losses in regulating services, such as reduced carbon sequestration and flood protection, to losses in provisioning services such as timber production (Butry et al. 2001). Vukomanovic and Steelman (2019) looked at how ecosystem services were affected by uncharacteristic wildfires and found largely negative effects. ...
... Although research on individual categories of wildfire damages is plentiful, there have been few published studies looking at total wildfire costs. Butry et al. (2001) examined the economic losses related to 'catastrophic' wildfires in northeastern Florida during the summer of 1998. Their wildfire cost accounting included damage estimates for suppression costs, disaster relief expenditures, timber losses, property damages, tourism-related losses and human health effects. ...
... Their wildfire cost accounting included damage estimates for suppression costs, disaster relief expenditures, timber losses, property damages, tourism-related losses and human health effects. Butry et al. (2001) found damages of at least US $600 million (over US$1 billion in 2021 $US), on par with damage estimates from level-2 hurricanes. Lynch (2004) estimated the total costs from two 'catastrophic' Colorado wildfires (Hayman and Bobcat Gulch Fires) in the early 2000s, finding broad costs beyond just those associated with suppression, property and human health effects, such as substantial habitat destruction to the threatened Pawnee Montane Skipper butterfly. ...
Background
Wildfires often have long-lasting costs that are difficult to document and are rarely captured in full.
Aims
We provide an example for measuring the full costs of a single wildfire over time, using a case study from the 2010 Schultz Fire near Flagstaff, Arizona, to enhance our understanding of the long-term costs of uncharacteristic wildfire.
Methods
We conducted a partial remeasurement of a 2013 study on the costs of the Schultz Fire by updating government and utility expenditures, conducting a survey of affected homeowners, estimating costs to ecosystem services and updating costs to real 2021 US dollars.
Key results
Costs associated with the Schultz Fire continued to accrue over 10 years, particularly those associated with post-wildfire flooding, totalling between US114 million. Suppression costs represented only 10% of total costs.
Conclusions
This study is the first of its kind to include a remeasurement of wildfire costs and to provide a long-term assessment of the same wildfire over a 10-year period.
Implications
Our results and lessons learned can help standardise approaches for full cost accounting of wildfire and illuminate the breadth of typically latent and indirect economic costs of wildfire such as post-wildfire flooding.
... Additionally, it is important to differentiate between building types, as industrial and infrastructure sites generally are better defensible and show greater fire resistance compared to residential areas. Understanding vulnerability requires accounting for the total cost of a wildfire disaster, including suppression costs, disruptions to business and tourism, recovery costs, and ecological impacts [140,141]. It should also consider the physical and socio-economic conditions that limit coping with long-lasting impacts, including the interactions of political, social, and economic factors [142][143][144][145][146]. Fire smoke, an indirect exposure, poses risks to human health [28,29,147], but it was not considered in this study due to challenges in modeling smoke physics (see, for e.g., Chen et al. [148]). ...
... Forest fires can cause serious socioeconomic impacts (Butry et al., 2001). The increased occurrence of fires degrades air quality, affecting public health (Butt et al. 2021). ...
Brazil is in world news every year due to the occurrence of large forest fires in its ecosystems. Although there is an evident need for environmental conservation in the country, no studies have identified gaps in forest fires in Protected Areas (PAs). Despite being important conservation tools, PAs have been implemented in the country without strategic planning and are often the target of fire events. Herein, we aimed to identify the patterns of publications, the improvements, and the scientific gaps regarding the occurrence of forest fires in Brazilian PAs in order to guide the direction of future research. We carried out a bibliometric review using all the research published on the theme indexed in the Scopus database up until 2020. We analyzed 135 publications distributed in 74 journals. We observed a growing interest in the theme, with greater scientific demand after the 2000s; as well as a wide network of collaboration between Brazilian and international institutions. The Cerrado was the most studied biome; however, the Caatinga, Pampa, and Pantanal biomes are not being considered in the development of these studies. The most frequent kinds of studies were publications on plants' responses to fire passage. Studies related to firefighting efficiency and to fire-climate and fire-fauna relationship require more attention. Our results will enable researchers to be directed toward key themes and will assist them in the possibility of partnerships and alliances. Greater efforts and incentives should be made to implement new research that fills the existing gaps.
... As suitable research on Southern Europe is limited, we also include three loss estimates derived from studies of U.S. wildfires. The Butry et al. (2001) case study assesses the Florida 1998 summer wildfires that burned a total of around 500'000 acres (202'343 ha). We apply the conservative lower bound total cost estimate of US$ 600 million (in 2001 values). ...
... Combining our results with the economic loss figures in €/ha leads to expected return period-specific economic losses pre-TA B L E 7 Range of country-level economic loss estimates for specific return levels (rl) in million € (in 2020€) sented in Table 7. Allowing a comparison of the individual publications' loss calculations, Figure 10 graphically displays the economic loss estimates for wildfires that are expected to occur, on average once every 20 years. Recall from Table 1, that while the estimates by Butry et al. (2001), Rahn et al. (2014), and Barrio et al. (2007) are relatively close, the country-specific €/ha estimate based on the figures in Merlo and Croitoru (2005) is lower than the other three for Italy and Greece, and higher for Portugal. The latest study conducted by Safford et al. (2022) clearly stands out with a distinctively larger loss estimate value. ...
... The coupling of our estimated BA return levels with existing economic loss figures also comes with strong caveats, particularly with regard to regional and temporal transfers of monetary estimates, as well as through the distinct study designs incorporating disparate economic variables in the respective loss calculations. For example, only Barrio et al. (2007) and Butry et al. (2001) include any estimation of wildfire-related health costs, which are of significant magnitude and thus, of rising concern as pointed out in Black et al. (2017). Furthermore, even though Merlo and Croitoru (2005) address country-level estimates of indirect use, option, bequest, and existence values of forests in general, they are not applied to the BA scenario and only the estimate provided by Safford et al. (2022) includes ecological (vegetation and wildlife) damage. ...
We estimate the country‐level risk of extreme wildfires defined by burned area (BA) for Mediterranean Europe and carry out a cross‐country comparison. To this end, we avail of the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) geospatial data from 2006 to 2019 to perform an extreme value analysis. More specifically, we apply a point process characterization of wildfire extremes using maximum likelihood estimation. By modeling covariates, we also evaluate potential trends and correlations with commonly known factors that drive or affect wildfire occurrence, such as the Fire Weather Index as a proxy for meteorological conditions, population density, land cover type, and seasonality. We find that the highest risk of extreme wildfires is in Portugal (PT), followed by Greece (GR), Spain (ES), and Italy (IT) with a 10‐year BA return level of 50'338 ha, 33'242 ha, 25'165 ha, and 8'966 ha, respectively. Coupling our results with existing estimates of the monetary impact of large wildfires suggests expected losses of 162–439 million € (PT), 81–219 million € (ES), 41–290 million € (GR), and 18–78 million € (IT) for such 10‐year return period events.
SUMMARY
We model the risk of extreme wildfires for Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain in form of burned area return levels, compare them, and estimate expected losses.
... The catastrophic wildfires in northeastern Florida in June and July 1998 burned an area of approximately 500,000 acres of forest and caused an economic loss of at least USD 600 million, which was close to the loss from a category-2 hurricane [30]. In the study by Butry et al. (2001), seven major categories of costs and losses were quantified and examined, which included pre-suppression costs, suppression costs, disaster relief expenditures, timber losses, property damages, tourism-related losses, and human health effects and economic effects on forestland owners and consumers. ...
... The catastrophic wildfires in northeastern Florida in June and July 1998 burned an area of approximately 500,000 acres of forest and caused an economic loss of at least USD 600 million, which was close to the loss from a category-2 hurricane [30]. In the study by Butry et al. (2001), seven major categories of costs and losses were quantified and examined, which included pre-suppression costs, suppression costs, disaster relief expenditures, timber losses, property damages, tourism-related losses, and human health effects and economic effects on forestland owners and consumers. Using a discount rate of 6%, forest landowners who experienced no wildfire losses were estimated to gain total welfare between USD 400 million to USD 1.4 billion in the long run because of the higher price, whereas forest landowners experienced with wildfire damages gained a total welfare between USD 33 to USD 61 million from salvage revenues. ...
The frequency of forest disturbances has increased under intensifying climate changes, and the economic impacts of forest disturbances should receive more attention. This paper systematically reviews models of the economic impacts of forest disturbances and summarizes four commonly applied models, which are “with and without” analysis, equilibrium models, the intervention model, and the social welfare model. The advantages and disadvantages of these four models are presented and compared, and literature using these models is introduced. The review of the economic assessment of damage caused by forest disturbances is expected to provide insights for researchers in this field and useful information about economic losses, price dynamics, and welfare redistribution for policymakers.
... To produce an estimate with the available data, Butry et al. (2001), examined seven major categories of costs and losses associated with catastrophic wildfires (presuppression costs, suppression costs, disaster relief expenditures, timber losses, property damage, tourism-related losses and human health effects), constructing a structural economic model using supply-and-demand relationships available in the literature and data from Mercer et al. (2000) on inventory losses and salvage volumes. The assumption that all the reductions in tourism were the result of the wildfires, was made. ...
... The assumption that all the reductions in tourism were the result of the wildfires, was made. To calculate the economic effects on health, the findings of CDC (1999) were applied (Butry et al. 2001). ...
... The Total Cost of Fire (ECLAC 2014;Hall 2014;Glover and Jessup 2006;Butry et al. 2001) consists of prevention and suppression costs, in addition to direct costs and indirect costs (Stougiannidou et al. 2020). ...
Within the last few decades, Greece has been through catastrophic wildfires with significant damages to agricultural areas, and considerable implications for the associated regional economy. The great number of wildfire occurrences annually is indicative of inefficiencies in the risk and mitigation management of wildfires. In the present manuscript, we focus on the selection of key variables to the cost assessment on agriculture. The econometric tool to derive the total cost determinants employed is the generalized log–gamma linear model, a special case of Generalized Linear Models. The cost assessment is one of the major issues for pre- and post-wildfire management. With the assistance of data derived by the Hellenic Agricultural Insurance Agency (ELGA), the Hellenic Statistic Authority (ELSTAT), and the Fire Service of Greece, we estimated the total cost of a wildfire. The cost calculation was based on a methodology developed by (Stougiannidou D, Zafeiriou E, Raftoyannis Y (2020) Forest Fires in Greece and Their Economic Impacts on Agriculture. KnE Social Sciences, pp.54–70). The research involved 54 wildfires within the time period 2004–2006 that affected coastal agricultural land in Greece. The model estimation has validated the statistical significance of the following independent variables of the model; the areas (arable and forests), the water resources, and the fire hazard category on the date of the fire. The findings provide policymakers an effective tool to limit the detrimental effects, in economic terms, of wildfires in agricultural lands. More specifically, the rectified use of aerial means, the well-educated and efficient employees, as well as advanced infrastructure in terms of water tanks and wildfires zones construction can be a few of the measures aiming at the limitation of the wildfires occurrence and their adequate management aiming at the restriction of their destructive economic effects in rural regions. Implementing the present model for territories with varying land structure, climate conditions, and cultivation types in Greece could be a subject of further research.
