Wildland Urban Interface
Webinar recording.
Recent destructive wildfires in northern California provide an opportunity to investigate how different factors influence home survival. We conducted an analysis of the 2018 Camp Fire, obtaining measurements from a randomly selected subset of homes in Paradise, to determine if nearby burning structures and/or nearby vegetation contributed to home survival, and whether new building codes in place since 2008 helped. The findings, corroborated by photographs taken of damaged but not destroyed homes, point to changes that could substantially improve outcomes.
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The pathways tool provides a series of empirically informed processes, choices, and engagement tactics designed to foster shared agreement about the best practices for wildfire adaptation across site-specific local conditions. We outline how the tool can advance adaptation processes for a variety of users, including (1) a community oriented planning process that will help reinforce or catalyze collective action about fire management, (2) a systematic approach for monitoring differential progress toward development of fire-adapted communities, and (3) a potential feedback mechanism that informs programmatic foci or allocation of future resources across potential actions designed for diverse social conditions.
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The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where structures and other human development intermingle with wildland vegetation or where housing is in the vicinity of large areas of wildland vegetation. This story map provides data on two trends from 1990 to 2020: the expansion of WUI area and the growth in housing in WUI areas.
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Many tools that identify wildfire risks and hazards across the landscape assume that all houses and properties within a community have the same level of risk. However, there are often substantial differences across properties, such as building materials and distance to overgrown vegetation. Tools that don’t account for parcel-level risk cannot provide the details necessary for informing action on private property, such as maintaining defensible space, posting a visible address sign, or hardening a structure.
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Colorado State University engineers have developed a model that can predict how wildfire will impact a community, down to which buildings will burn. They say predicting damage to the built environment is essential to developing fire mitigation strategies and steps for recovery.
Conference website.
Coastal Quest, in partnership with Ventura County Wildfire Collaborative, is proud to present the first California Wildfire Conference. This three-day exchange will bring together a diverse community of wildfire practitioners to focus on understanding, preventing, and recovering from wildfires. The conference will be held from October 24-26, 2023, in Ventura County at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
The Community Wildfire Mitigation Best Practices training is designed to increase the skills of the professional mitigation practitioner and individuals who run mitigation programs. Participation in the 9-week virtual course is not guaranteed as we endeavor to provide training to individuals who lead or have responsibility for community wildfire mitigation programs. Acceptance is on a per person basis and is not transferable to another person. If there are multiple people from an organization signing up please ensure they sign up individually.
Webinar recording.
This webinar will provide an overview of the major changes in CO-WRA, including modification of Scott and Burgan (2005) standard fire behavior fuel models to better reflect fuel types in Colorado, incorporating LiDAR to produce higher spatial resolution data products, and advanced wildland-urban interface risk analysis. Presenters will explain how these datasets and information can be used to: (1) increase public awareness about wildfire risk; (2) support wildfire risk reduction efforts, decision-making, and research from state to local scales; (3) identify high priority areas; (4) assist in the development of Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) and other hazard mitigation plans; and (5) complement forest stewardship and forest management plans.
After a brief review, presenters will explore discussions and questions from participants to address technical issues.
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This research is a case study of one community, located in Washington State, that is located on unprotected lands. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 32 participants who live in the study area. Participants were asked questions to assess their level of knowledge about unprotected lands and to determine their preferences regarding the introduction of formalized fire protection. Over the course of the field work, data was also gathered pertaining to participants’ capacity to adapt to wildfire and the social characteristics that are present within the community that could impact their ability to ‘live with wildfire.’ We discovered that a large proportion of participants were unaware that they had no formalized fire protection and displayed significant lack of knowledge about unprotected lands. Those participants, however, shared social characteristics with the participants that were aware of their level of fire protection that promote a sense of collective self-sufficiency and a rejection of outside interference. Those participants who were aware of the unprotected lands situation did profess a need for some type of additional fire protection for their community, but in general, participants favored managing wildfire risk on their own.
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Our modeling approach identifies spatial and temporal patterns of wildfire potential and risk, which is critical information to guide decision-making. Because the drivers behind risk shift over time, strategies to mitigate risk may need to account for multiple drivers simultaneously.