The Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment has awarded $30,000 in seed funding to Andrew Hultgren, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, and others for an interdisciplinary proposal examining the economic and human health effects of exposure to wildfire smoke on a broad scale. The project aims to inform policy related to climate change.

Hultgren has done previous work assessing the impact of climate change on global agricultural yields. Research has demonstrated that wildfires are increasing in size and cost, with far-reaching implications for human health and the economy; further, climate change has been linked to increased exposure to wildfires. To date, however, no study has examined all of those factors combined, at either a regional or global scale, leaving a “critical gap” in our understanding of the social and economic impacts of climate change and policies needed to address them, Hultgren said.

“This project will lay the foundation for a multidisciplinary research agenda that can close this gap and potentially feed directly into U.S. environmental policy,” Hultgren said. “iSEE’s funding is critical to building out our capacity to quantify the social impacts of a changing wildfire regime under future warming — information that can be used by local, regional, and national policymakers in their climate policy decision-making.”

Hultgren's is one of two projects receiving seed funding from iSEE. Read about both projects on their website.