[MCN] Climate change greatly escalates forest disturbance risks to US property values, particularly in high-risk regions of western US

[Lance Olsen]

Climate change greatly escalates forest disturbance risks to US property values
William R L Anderegg, Timothy Collins, Sara Grineski, Sarah Nicholls and Christoph Nolte
Published 17 August 2023 • 
Environmental Research Letters <https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/1748-9326>, Volume 18 <https://iopscience.iop.org/volume/1748-9326/18>, Number 9 <https://iopscience.iop.org/issue/1748-9326/18/9>
Citation William R L Anderegg et al 2023 Environ. Res. Lett. 18 094011
DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ace639
 <https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ace639/pdf>
Article PDF <https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ace639/pdf> 
862 Total downloads

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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“I just want it to be clear that the mainstream environmental movement has been asking very little of people for decades,” said Bea Ruiz, also an organizer with the U.S. national [ Extinction Rebellion ] team. 

“There’s no element of, ‘We are in an emergency. We all need to do more than what we’re doing.”

Extinction Rebellion’s radical philosophy
July 22 2019
https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/

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