Assessing wildfire potential within the wildland-urban interface: A southeastern Ohio example

Spreading cities and suburbs remain a common phenomenon throughout the United States. Urban spread, and the desire to move beyond the subdivision for a more natural setting in the country creates both opportunities and challenges for natural resource managers in the path of urban expansion. Perhaps no challenge is as great as those related to wildfire risk within the lands describing the urban–wildland interface. The need to gain a better understanding of the wildland–urban interface is critical to policy makers charged with risk reduction responsibilities. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology that aptly characterizes the spatial distribution of wildfire risk potential in southeastern Ohio. The project goals are achieved using a geospatial technology solution to model critical hazard and risk variables associated with wildfire. The results of this study demonstrate that the association of wildfire with hazard and risk variables can be exploited to improve wildfire potential mapping and a validation assessment of the geographic information systems (GIS)-based prescriptive model displayed a strong agreement with the pattern of historic wildfire for the region.