California statewide wildfire burn regime projections (2020-2100)

At the intersection of climate change and rural development, wildfire has emerged as a threat to agriculture in the western United States. This nexus is particularly problematic for the rapidly developing cannabis industry in California, which includes farms located outside of traditional agricultural zones and within landscapes potentially more prone to wildfire. With the goal of determining whether cannabis is uniquely vulnerable to direct wildfire impacts (in terms of crop loss to burning), we integrated fire hazard severity zone data, wildfire perimeters, and future burn regime projections in relation to the location and cultivated area of cannabis farming. We then applied descriptive statistics and generalized additive models (GAM) to compare the location of licensed cannabis farms to other agricultural types in California, including grapes, pasture, and all other general crops combined. We found cannabis farming was located more often in high and very high fire hazard severity zon...