US Burned Buildings data package

It contains a copy of the main data files exactly as used for this paper, as well as other accompanying files. Contains all the digitized burned and survived buildings that were within fire perimeters that occurred between 2000 and 2010 in the conterminous U.S

Meta-Analysis of Heterogeneity in the Effects of Wildfire Smoke Exposure on Respiratory Health in North America

Epidemiological studies consistently show an association between wildfire-related smoke exposure and adverse respiratory health. We conducted a systematic review of evidence in published literature pertaining to heterogeneity of respiratory effects from this exposure in North America. We calculated the within-study ratio of relative risks (RRR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) to examine heterogeneity of effect by population subgroup, and then summarized the RRRs using meta-analysis. We found evidence of a greater effect of wildfire smoke on respiratory health among females relative to males for asthma (RRR: 1.035, 95% CI: 1.013, 1.057) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (RRR: 1.018, 95% CI: 1.003, 1.032). There was evidence of a lower relative risk for all respiratory outcomes among youth compared to adults (RRR: 0.976, 95% CI: 0.963, 0.989). We also found wildfire smoke effects stratified by income, race, education, health behaviors, access to care, housing occupancy, geographic region, and urban/rural status. However, data were insufficient to quantitatively evaluate effect modification by these characteristics. While we found evidence that certain demographic subgroups of the population are more susceptible to respiratory health outcomes from wildfire smoke, it is unclear whether this information can be used to inform policy aimed to reduce health impact of wildfires

Data from: Factors related to building loss due to wildfires in the conterminous United States

Wildfire is globally an important ecological disturbance affecting biochemical cycles, and vegetation composition, but also puts people and their homes at risk. Suppressing wildfires has detrimental ecological effects and can promote larger and more intense wildfires when fuels accumulate, which increases the threat to buildings in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). Yet, when wildfires occur, typically only a small proportion of the buildings within the fire perimeter are lost, and the question is what determines which buildings burn. Our goal was to examine which factors are related to building loss when a wildfire occurs throughout the United States. We were particularly interested in the relative roles of vegetation, topography, and the spatial arrangement of buildings, and how their respective roles vary among ecoregions. We analyzed all fires that occurred within the conterminous U.S. from 2000 to 2010 and digitized which buildings were lost and which survived according to Google Earth historical imagery. We modeled the occurrence as well as the percentage of buildings lost within clusters using logistic and linear regression. Overall, variables related to topography and the spatial arrangement of buildings were more frequently present in the best 20 regression models than vegetation-related variables. In other words, specific locations in the landscape have a higher fire risk, and certain development patterns can exacerbate that risk. Fire policies and prevention efforts focused on vegetation management are important, but insufficient to solve current wildfire problems. Furthermore, the factors associated with building loss varied considerably among ecoregions suggesting that fire policy applied uniformly across the US will not work equally well in all regions and that efforts to adapt communities to wildfires must be regionally tailored

Racial, ethnic, and gender differences in obesity and body fat distribution: An All of Us Research Program demonstration project

Differences in obesity and body fat distribution across gender and race/ethnicity have been extensively described. We sought to replicate these differences and evaluate newly emerging data from the All of Us Research Program (AoU). We compared body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio from the baseline physical examination, and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) from the electronic health record in up to 88,195 Non-Hispanic White (NHW), 40,770 Non-Hispanic Black (NHB), 35,640 Hispanic, and 5,648 Asian participants. We compared AoU sociodemographic variable distribution to National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data and applied the pseudo-weighting method for adjusting selection biases of AoU recruitment. Our findings replicate previous observations with respect to gender differences in BMI. In particular, we replicate the large gender disparity in obesity rates among NHB participants, in which obesity and mean BMI are much higher in NHB women than NHB men (33.34 kg/m2 versus 28.40 kg/m2 respectively; p<2.22x10-308). The overall age-adjusted obesity prevalence in AoU participants is similar overall but lower than the prevalence found in NHANES for NHW participants. ALT was higher in men than women, and lower among NHB participants compared to other racial/ethnic groups, consistent with previous findings. Our data suggest consistency of AoU with national averages related to obesity and suggest this resource is likely to be a major source of scientific inquiry and discovery in diverse populations. © 2021 Karnes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]