With a NASA grant, a U-M/Michigan Tech collaboration is working to help people better protect themselves from smoke and other air pollutants produced by wildfires
RESEARCH TO WATCH
WHAT'S THE STUDY: Researchers at the University of Michigan and Michigan Technological University are performing an in-depth analysis of smoke and other air pollutants produced by extreme wildfires in the Western United States over the past three decades. They're coupling that with interviews and surveys of residents of these fire-prone areas to better understand how people perceive and respond to the risks associated with wildfire smoke and other threats to air quality.
The work, which is supported by NASA, will include a special focus on populations that are particularly vulnerable to wildfire smoke, including children, outdoor workers and rural communities. These communities tend to be closer to forests than urban areas, and people in rural communities tend to have lifestyles connected to outdoor activities-vocations and recreation-more than in urban populations.
WHY IT MATTERS: Although researchers have been studying wildfire smoke for decades, there remains much to learn about how well people understand its risks and what they can do to mitigate those risks. With wildfires becoming more intense and frequent, this project aims to build a base of evidence that individuals and policymakers can use to make decisions that protect themselves and their communities.
HOW MUCH AND FOR HOW LONG: The $1.6 million collaboration began in 2023 and will be completed in fall 2027.
WHO'S INVOLVED:
Paige Fischer, associate professor at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability, or SEAS, is a social scientist who studies wildfires. She conducts research on how people experience and perceive wildfire risk, as well as what motivates and constrains them in taking action to reduce risk. She also examines how people adapt to long-term changes in climate conditions that drive wildfire risk.
"We're not expecting individual action to be the only way to protect people from smoke. But to design programs and different kinds of policy interventions, we first need to understand under what conditions are people going to take action to protect themselves on their own, if at all," Fischer said. "Knowing what motivates people to take the initiative to protect themselves-like, how bad does smoke have to be for people to take initiative?-that will help us understand when policy needs to intervene and how."
Sue Anne Bell is a nurse practitioner and associate professor at U-M's School of Nursing. Her research focuses on the long-term impact of disasters and public health emergencies on health. She is clinically active in disaster response through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Disaster Medical System with over a dozen recent deployments.
"Wildfire smoke is a public health challenge that affects more and more communities across the country every year," Bell said. "This study can give a better understanding of how people perceive smoke risks and what barriers they may face in protecting themselves and their families, and importantly, can help to identify more practical and equitable approaches to wildfire smoke preparedness. Our team's goal is to use evidence from this study to build informed public health and policy decisions that support healthier communities, as wildfire events worsen."
Nancy French is a technical fellow at the Michigan Tech Research Institute and an adjunct professor at Michigan Tech University's College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science. She earned her master's and doctorate degrees at the U-M School of Natural Resources, the predecessor to SEAS, and is an expert in remote sensing and terrestrial ecosystem science. She uses these in her research on characterizing wildfires and their smoke through time and space, as well as their impacts on health.
"Mapping wildland fires is the first step in knowing how fire and smoke impact the land and people. Satellite remote sensing and improvements in recordkeeping have allowed both fire management practitioners and wildland fire researchers to better understand the patterns and trends in fire occurrence. We know from quantitative evidence that fires in the Western U.S. are increasing, in both size and severity. The consequences of these fires on the people and the land, however, are not fully known, especially when considering the impacts of these fires on air quality," French said.
"It is a two-part question: Where and when and how much smoke is produced, and where and when is that smoke impinging on communities where people live and work? Our work strives to define the impacts of smoke from wildland fire from both a physical process and human factors point of view. The solution needs to include not just mapping extreme smoke events based on the physical attributes, but also taking into account the experience of the people who live in areas where extreme smoke events have and will occur. Living with fire in the future will depend on having a better understanding of how people can and want to respond to the increasing threat of wildland fires."
Caroline Beckman is a doctoral student at SEAS who studies how communities respond to environmental threats. Before joining SEAS, Beckman worked as a community organizer and program manager at Climate Resilient Communities, a community-based organization in the San Francisco Bay Area working with frontline residents experiencing wildfire smoke, extreme heat and flooding.
"With climate change and the fuel loads in our forests, both in the U.S. and globally, we're going to live in a world that is smokier," Beckman said. "The more research that comes out, the more we know that smoke in any amount is really bad for human health. That's in the short term and in the long term, where it exacerbates heart and lung conditions. New research is also linking it to dementia. Ultimately, we'll see excess mortality that is attributable to wildfire smoke.
"Human behavior is one of the best tools in our toolbox to reduce exposure to that growing threat. So, given that we're going to have smoke, our focus really needs to be on how we ensure that people are capable of doing something to reduce their exposure for their health, their family's health and their community health."
Dani Grant is a postdoctoral research fellow at SEAS who earned her doctorate in social psychology from the University of Colorado. At U-M, she studies how cognitive biases and social factors shape people's risk perceptions of wildfire smoke and investigates what conditions motivate individuals and institutions to take protective action.
"Work in the wildfire smoke domain can often downplay the importance of the social environment in which protective decisions are embedded. People don't make decisions in isolation simply based on air quality. People experience and respond to smoke in socially embedded contexts shaped by relationships, norms, identity and community expectations," Grant said. "Decisions about masking, rescheduling activities or changing routines are shaped by concerns about vulnerable loved ones, perceptions of what others approve of and broader cultural meaning attached to those actions. Because wildfire smoke literature is relatively new and rapidly growing, we are only beginning to understand how these psychosocial factors influence protective decision-making.
"One thing that has stood out to me working on an interdisciplinary team is how incomplete any single perspective is on its own. Physical science helps us understand where the smoke goes and how dangerous it is, but that alone can't predict how, when and why people take protective action whereas others don't. Social and psychological factors like identity, community norms, trust, caregiving responsibilities play a major role in predicting risk perceptions and behaviors. At the same time, we would not be able to study these social and psychological processes with this level of precision without collaborating closely with our smoke and atmospheric science team whose work allows us to know the actual smoke exposures people are experiencing."
Shiliang Wu is a professor in the College of Engineering at Michigan Tech who specializes in atmospheric chemistry and environmental engineering. He studies interactions among climate, air quality and land cover, as well as the impacts of global change on atmospheric chemistry and long-range transport of air pollution.
"Smoke and other air pollutants emitted by wildfires can be transported hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their sources with impacts that may persist for weeks or longer," Wu said. "During transport, these air pollutants undergo complex chemical transformations in the atmosphere. Many of these processes are highly nonlinear and strongly influenced by meteorological conditions. To better understand and quantify wildfire-induced air quality impacts, we use sophisticated, well-established computer models to simulate the perturbations in air quality caused by wildfires."
Meg Czerwinski is a postdoctoral research fellow at SEAS and a registered nurse with Michigan Medicine who earned her doctorate from U-M's Rackham Graduate School. Czerwinski's research investigates wildfire smoke preparedness among older adults requiring long-term care, initially focusing on preparedness strategies in the Western U.S.
"The spring is a great time to prepare-before heat, wildfire news and smoke become overwhelming. While staying indoors is often the go-to guidance to reduce exposure during wildfire smoke events, indoor air quality can vary, too. Checking resources to keep cool and keep smoke outside-window and door seals, purchasing extra HEPA or MERV13+ filters for air conditioning, air purifiers and/or DIY box fan filters-can improve indoor air quality," Czerwinski said.
"Oftentimes, individuals and communities are navigating multiple hazards and balancing work and family obligations, physical health, mental well-being and financial limitations. Proactively supporting informed decision-making can help individuals optimize protective action and health decision making across multiple dimensions. By sharing lessons and strategies across communities, this may ease the strain of adaptation to smoke and other hazards."
