The population directly exposed to wildland fires increased by 40% globally from 2002 to 2021, according to a new study by Seyd Teymoor Seydi and colleagues. This increase occurred even as there was a 26% decrease in burned area during the same period. The increase was mainly driven by more people living in the wildland-urban interface – in other words, people moving into the areas where wildland fires occur. What’s more, 85% of global wildland fire exposures between 2002 and 2021 occurred in Africa, where fires do not usually reach catastrophic levels, although wildfire disasters in North America, Europe, and Oceania have garnered much more attention. Wildland fires from 1990 to 2021 are responsible for at least 2,500 deaths and 10,500 injuries, and 1.53 million deaths globally can be attributed to wildfire-induced air pollution. To quantify where direct exposure is happening, Seydi et al. looked at 18.6 million fire records from the Global Fire Atlas, along with population data and land cover and use data. In regions where fires spread rapidly, such as western North America and Australia, it is important to use “home hardening” structural and landscaping practices to enhance fire resistance, and “there is also a need for increased intentional fire use as a vegetation management tool to mitigate wildfire disasters,” the authors write.

A new statistical analysis of geochemical datasets by Elizabeth Holley and colleagues suggests that the U.S. could reduce its dependence on critical mineral imports by recovering ore byproducts from its active metal mines. Holley et al. conclude that 90% recovery of these byproducts “could meet nearly all U.S. critical mineral needs; one percent recovery would substantially reduce import reliance for most elements evaluated.” A host of minerals, including cobalt, nickel, manganese, lithium, tellurium, germanium, and more, have been designated in the U.S. as critical minerals for their importance in technologies from batteries to magnets to solar panels. Increased demand and geopolitical conflict in major mining regions, along with the long timeline for developing new mines, make a new domestic source of these minerals an attractive prospect for the U.S. To estimate the amount of these minerals that could be recovered domestically as byproducts, Holley et al. analyzed two databases covering the main commodity production of U.S. metal mines and the geochemistry for 70 critical minerals analyzed across ore samples in the U.S. In most cases, recovering less than 10% of the byproducts would generate a larger gross dollar amount than the main products of U.S. metal mines, according to the researchers.

In a new paper in Science, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, Boise State University in Idaho, and East Anglia University in England Worldwide, report that land area consumed by wildfires decreased by 26 percent from 2002 to 2021. During the same time, human exposure to blazes jumped by 40 percent, with Africa accounting for most of it.