Yang, A., Yang, J., Yang, D., Xu, R., He, Y., Aragon, A., & Qiu, H. (2021). Human mobility to parks under the COVID‐19 pandemic and wildfire seasons in the Western and Central United States. GeoHealth, 5(12), e2021GH000494.

• Research Objective:
  • To study the correlation between the COVID-19 pandemic, wildfires and human mobility
• Study Area:
  • Twelve states in the western and central US (Washington, Oregon, California, etc.) during June ­­– September 2020
• Data:
  • Human mobility data by County from SafeGraph
  • 42,211 park-related POI locations
  • Wildfire-related covariates (Carbon monoxide (CD), Sulfur dioxide (SO_2), Nitrogen dioxide (NO_2), Distance to fire, Fire density, Minimum smoke, Maximum smoke)
• Methods:
  • Geographic and temporal weighted regression (GTWR)
• Wildfire-related results:
  • Most counties showed a negative relationship between the number of visits per capita and toxic gases
  • People spent more time at parks with higher wildfire density
  • Travel distance to park is positively correlated with distance to wildfire in some states

• Research Significance:
  • This study found people tend to travel further and spend longer time at the parks away from wildfires with less smoke, especially during the major wildfire seasons between August and September