Breakpoint models shown no evidence of thresholds in recreational response to increasing wildfire smoke in the American West

Abstract

Ambient wildfire smoke in the American West has worsened considerably in recent decades, while the number of individuals recreating outdoors has simultaneously surged. Wildfire smoke poses a serious risk to human health, especially during long periods of exposure and during exercise. Here we aggregate data on black carbon, a major component of wildfire smoke, and recreational visitation in 32 U.S. national parks from 1980 - 2019 to examine how visitors respond to wildfire smoke. We hypothesize that visitor response may exhibit a threshold effect where ambient smoke reduces visitation after a critical level, but not before. We develop a series of breakpoint models to test this hypothesis. Overall, these models show little to no effect of ambient smoke on visitation to the 32 parks tested, even when allowing for critical thresholds at the extreme upper ranges of the smoke data. This suggests that wildfire smoke does not significantly alter behavior of park attendance. This finding has implications for the management of recreation areas, public health, and climate change adaptation broadly.