Examining the existing definitions of wildland‐urban interface for California

• DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.4306
• Publication Date: 2022-12-23T07:41:26Z
• Authors: Mukesh Kumar; Shu Li; Phu Nguyen; Tirtha Banerjee
• Keywords: Wildland–urban interface

Abstract Past studies reported a drastic growth in the wildland–urban interface (WUI), location where man‐made structures meet or overlap wildland vegetation. Fighting fire is difficult WUI due to combination of and structural fuels, therefore, areas are characterized by frequent damage loss from wildfires. Recent policy has targeted prevention, evacuation planning, fuel treatment, home hardening areas. Therefore, it important understand occurrence wildfire events relative WUI. In this work, we have occurrences wildfires with respect quantified how much on complex topography California, which intensifies behavior complicates suppression. We additionally analyzed importance WUI‐related parameters, such as housing density, vegetation distance wildfires, well topographic factors, slope, elevation, aspect, surface roughness, large small burned area near found that very percentage ignition points wildfire‐burned (>400 ha 1000 acres) were located A encountered (3%), accounted for only 4% burned, increased 5% 56%, respectively, outside (5‐km buffer WUI). Similarly, 66% fires ignited WUI, whereas 3.6% within Results study implications management infrastructure hardening, suppression community response.