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Impacts of Wildfire on Children

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Wildfires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires

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Definition

Impacts are defined as the adverse effects of wildfire on children and may include fatalities, injuries, and other effects on children’s physical and mental health, education, family functioning, and social connectedness. Children are defined as persons under the age of 18 years.

Introduction

Our world is increasingly experiencing wildfires that are both more frequent and intense (IPCC 2018; Jolly et al. 2015; Sharples et al. 2016). This is exacerbating the risk of wildfire disasters, particularly on the wildland-urban interface where ongoing development and population growth is exposing greater numbers of people to potential damage and loss (Radeloff et al. 2018; Strader 2018; Theobald and Romme 2007). There is also increasing evidence that children are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of wildfires. While the earliest studies can be traced back to southeastern Australia in the mid-1980s, the last decade has seen a surge of child-focused research in...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Briony Towers

  2. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Amy Cardinal Christianson

  3. Faculty of Social Sciences, School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Christine Eriksen

Authors
  1. Briony Towers
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  2. Amy Cardinal Christianson
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  3. Christine Eriksen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Briony Towers .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fire Research Division, Engineering Laboratory (EL), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD, USA

    Samuel L. Manzello

Section Editor information

  1. Land & Water, CSIRO, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Raphaele Blanchi

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Towers, B., Christianson, A.C., Eriksen, C. (2020). Impacts of Wildfire on Children. In: Manzello, S.L. (eds) Encyclopedia of Wildfires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52090-2_90

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