Research Database
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9
Wildfire risk reduction in the United States: Leadership staff perceptions of local fire department roles and responsibilities
Year: 2018
As wildland fires have had increasing negative impacts on a range of human values, in many parts of the United States (U.S.) and around the world, collaborative risk reduction efforts among agencies, homeowners, and fire departments are needed to improve wildfire safety and mitigate risk. Using interview data from 46 senior officers from local fire departments around the U.S., we examine how leadership staff view their departments’ roles and responsibilities in wildfire risk reduction. Overall, our findings indicate that local fire personnel are often performing a variety of mitigation tasks…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Rapid growth of the US wildland-urban interface raises wildfire risk
Year: 2018
The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where houses and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle, and where wildfire problems are most pronounced. Here we report that the WUI in the United States grew rapidly from 1990 to 2010 in terms of both number of new houses (from 30.8 to 43.4 million; 41% growth) and land area (from 581,000 to 770,000 km2; 33% growth), making it the fastest-growing land use type in the conterminous United States. The vast majority of new WUI areas were the result of new housing (97%), not related to an increase in wildland vegetation. Within the perimeter of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Where wildfires destroy buildings in the US relative to the wildland–urban interface and national fire outreach programs
Year: 2018
Over the past 30 years, the cost of wildfire suppression and homes lost to wildfire in the US have increased dramatically, driven in part by the expansion of the wildland–urban interface (WUI), where buildings and wildland vegetation meet. In response, the wildfire management community has devoted substantial effort to better understand where buildings and vegetation co-occur, and to establish outreach programs to reduce wildfire damage to homes. However, the extent to which the location of buildings affected by wildfire overlaps the WUI, and where and when outreach programs are established…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Negative consequences of positive feedbacks in US wildfire management
Year: 2015
Over the last two decades wildfire activity, damage, and management cost within the US have increased substantially. These increases have been associated with a number of factors including climate change and fuel accumulation due to a century of active fire suppression. The increased fire activity has occurred during a time of significant ex-urban development of the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) along with increased demand on water resources originating on forested landscapes. These increased demands have put substantial pressure on federal agencies charged with wildfire management to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Rebuilding and new housing development after wildfire
Year: 2015
The number of wildland-urban interface communities affected by wildfire is increasing, and both wildfire suppression and losses are costly. However, little is known about post-wildfire response by homeowners and communities after buildings are lost. Our goal was to characterise rebuilding and new development after wildfires across the conterminous United States. We analysed all wildfires in the conterminous USA from 2000 to 2005. We mapped 42 724 buildings, of which 34 836 were present before the fire and survived, 3604 were burned, 2403 were post-fire new development, and 1881 were burned…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Categorizing the social context of the wildland urban interface: Adaptive capacity for wildfire and community "archetypes"
Year: 2015
Understanding the local context that shapes collective response to wildfire risk continues to be a challenge for scientists and policymakers. This study utilizes and expands on a conceptual approach for understanding adaptive capacity to wildfire in a comparison of 18 past case studies. The intent is to determine whether comparison of local social context and community characteristics across cases can identify community "archetypes" that approach wildfire planning and mitigation in consistently different ways. Identification of community archetypes serves as a potential strategy for…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Wildfire Mitigation Activities in the Wildland-Urban Interface
Year: 2015
We assessed wildfire mitigation activities in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) of New Mexico to identifywhich strategies are most effective. First, we modeledhow fuel treatments change wildfire behavior in 12 WUI areas.The second element of our analysis used data from over 2,000assessments of home wildfire hazard to better understand howthose hazards are distributed and change over time. We examinedthe Firewise communities in New Mexico because of the importantrole the Firewise program plays in public wildfire educationnationally. The fourth element of our assessment examined nineCommunity…
Publication Type: Report
Re-envisioning community-wildfire relations in the U.S. West as adaptive governance
Year: 2015
Prompted by a series of increasingly destructive, expensive, and highly visible wildfire crises in human communities across the globe, a robust body of scholarship has emerged to theorize, conceptualize, and measure community-level resilience to wildfires. To date, however, insufficient consideration has been given to wildfire resilience as a process of adaptive governance mediated by institutions at multiple scales. Here we explore the possibilities for addressing this gap through an analysis of wildfire resilience among wildland-urban interface communities in the western region of the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Understanding gaps between the risk perceptions of wildland-urban interface (WUI) residents and wildfire professionals
Year: 2015
Research across a variety of risk domains finds that the risk perceptions of professionals and the public differ. Such risk perception gaps occur if professionals and the public understand individual risk factors differently or if they aggregate risk factors into overall risk differently. The nature of such divergences, whether based on objective inaccuracies or on differing perspectives, is important to understand. However, evidence of risk perception gaps typically pertains to general, overall risk levels; evidence of and details about mismatches between the specific level of risk faced by…
Publication Type: Journal Article