Places where wildfire potential and social vulnerability coincide in the coterminous United States

The hazards-of-place model posits that vulnerability to environmental hazards depends on both biophysical and social factors. Biophysical factors determine where wildfire potential is elevated, whereas social factors determine where and how people are affected by wildfire. We evaluated place vulnerability to wildfire hazards in the coterminous US. We developed a social vulnerability index using principal component analysis and evaluated it against existing measures of wildfire potential and wildland–urban interface designations. We created maps showing the coincidence of social vulnerability and wildfire potential to identify places according to their vulnerability to wildfire. We found that places with high wildfire potential have, on average, lower social vulnerability than other places, but nearly 10% of all housing in places with high wildfire potential also exhibits high social vulnerability. We summarised our data by states to evaluate trends at a subnational level. Although some regions, such as the South-east, had more housing in places with high wildfire vulnerability, other regions, such as the upper Midwest, exhibited higher rates of vulnerability than expected. Our results can help to inform wildfire prevention, mitigation and recovery planning, as well as reduce wildfire hazards affecting vulnerable places and populations.

[1]  E. Chuvieco,et al.  Integration of ecological and socio-economic factors to assess global vulnerability to wildfire , 2014 .

[2]  S. Cutter.  Vulnerability to environmental hazards , 1996 .

[3]  Daniel P. Johnson,et al.  Developing an applied extreme heat vulnerability index utilizing socioeconomic and environmental data , 2012 .

[4]  Christine S. Olsen,et al.  Building community–agency trust in fire-affected communities in Australia and the United States , 2013 .

[5]  R. Berrens,et al.  Inducing private wildfire risk mitigation: Experimental investigation of measures on adjacent public lands , 2011 .

[6]  Siew Hoon Lim,et al.  Wildland fire, risk, and recovery: results of a national survey with regional and racial perspectives , 2008 .

[7]  Volker C. Radeloff,et al.  Adapting to Wildfire: Rebuilding After Home Loss , 2015 .

[8]  L. Ghermandi,et al.  Wildland–Urban Interface Fires and Socioeconomic Conditions: A Case Study of a Northwestern Patagonia City , 2012, Environmental Management.

[9]  W. Adger,et al.  THEORY AND PRACTICE IN ASSESSING VULNERABILITY TO CLIMATE CHANGE AND FACILITATING ADAPTATION , 2000 .

[10]  Charles Davis.  The West in Flames: The Intergovernmental Politics of Wildfire Suppression and Prevention , 2001 .

[11]  A S Fotheringham,et al.  The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem in Multivariate Statistical Analysis , 1991 .

[12]  Gregory L. Simon,et al.  Flame and fortune in California: The material and political dimensions of vulnerability , 2013 .

[13]  Susan I. Stewart,et al.  Demographic Trends, the Wildland–Urban Interface, and Wildfire Management , 2009 .

[14]  P. Jakes,et al.  Trial by fire: community wildfire protection plans put to the test , 2013 .

[15]  Timothy W. Collins,et al.  The political ecology of hazard vulnerability: marginalization, facilitation and the production of differential risk to urban wildfires in Arizona's White Mountains , 2008 .

[16]  Sanjay Mishra,et al.  Efficient theory development and factor retention criteria: Abandon the ‘eigenvalue greater than one’ criterion , 2008 .

[17]  Cheryl R. Renner,et al.  Goals, obstacles and effective strategies of wildfire mitigation programs in the Wildland-Urban Interface , 2005 .

[18]  Susan I. Stewart,et al.  Rebuilding and new housing development after wildfire , 2015 .

[19]  Alan A Ager,et al.  Coupling the Biophysical and Social Dimensions of Wildfire Risk to Improve Wildfire Mitigation Planning , 2015, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[20]  Susan L. Cutter,et al.  The Unsustainable Trend of Natural Hazard Losses in the United States , 2011 .

[21]  Hannah Brenkert-Smith,et al.  Assessing social vulnerability to climate change in human communities near public forests and grasslands: a framework for resource managers and planners , 2013 .

[22]  Daniel R. Williams,et al.  Community wildfire protection planning: is the Healthy Forests Restoration Act's vagueness genius? , 2011 .

[23]  W. L. Shirley,et al.  Social Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards , 2003 .

[24]  Mathew C Schmidtlein,et al.  A Sensitivity Analysis of the Social Vulnerability Index , 2008, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[25]  Emily Jane Davis,et al.  Categorizing the Social Context of the Wildland Urban Interface: Adaptive Capacity for Wildfire and Community "Archetypes" , 2015 .

[26]  Matthew P. Thompson,et al.  A national approach for integrating wildfire simulation modeling into Wildland Urban Interface risk assessments within the United States , 2013 .

[27]  Susan I. Stewart,et al.  The wildland-urban interface in the United States based on 125 million building locations. , 2005, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[28]  Lindsey R. Barnes,et al.  A place-based model for understanding community resilience to natural disasters , 2008 .

[29]  Kelsi S. Bracmort,et al.  Wildfire Protection in the Wildland-Urban Interface , 2012 .

[30]  R. B. Hammer,et al.  Mapping Multiple Forest Threats in the Northwestern United States , 2013 .

[31]  Albert S. Fu.  The Façade of Safety in California’s Shelter-In-Place Homes: History, Wildfire, and Social Consequence , 2013 .

[32]  S. Ventura,et al.  ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS INFLUENCING WILDFIRES IN THE UPPER MIDWEST, UNITED STATES , 2001 .

[33]  Volker C. Radeloff,et al.  Wildfire risk in the wildland―urban interface: A simulation study in northwestern Wisconsin , 2009 .

[34]  Sarah McCaffrey,et al.  Social science research related to wildfire management: an overview of recent findings and future research needs , 2013 .

[35]  S. Brody,et al.  Social vulnerability and the natural and built environment: a model of flood casualties in Texas. , 2008, Disasters.

[36]  Ling Bian,et al.  Comparing Effects of Aggregation Methods on Statistical and Spatial Properties of Simulated Spatial Data , 1999 .

[37]  Ryan Ojerio,et al.  Limited Involvement of Socially Vulnerable Populations in Federal Programs to Mitigate Wildfire Risk in Arizona , 2011 .

[38]  S. Dark,et al.  The modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) in physical geography , 2007 .

[39]  Alan A. Ager,et al.  Objective and perceived wildfire risk and its influence on private forest landowners' fuel reduction activities in Oregon's (USA) ponderosa pine ecoregion , 2014 .

[40]  Scott L. Goodrick,et al.  Wildland fire risk and social vulnerability in the Southeastern United States: An exploratory spatial data analysis approach , 2011 .

[41]  D. Calkin,et al.  The effects of wildfire and environmental amenities on property values in northwest Montana, USA. , 2010 .

[42]  Bart R. Johnson,et al.  Spatially and socially segmenting private landowner motivations, properties, and management: A typology for the wildland urban interface , 2015 .

[43]  Toddi A. Steelman,et al.  Is Wildfire Policy in the United States Sustainable? , 2007 .

[44]  D. Calkin,et al.  Are wildfire management resources in the United States efficiently allocated to protect resources at risk? A case study from Montana , 2014 .

[45]  W. Romme,et al.  Expansion of the US wildland–urban interface , 2007 .

[46]  David T. Butry,et al.  What Is the Price of Catastrophic Wildfire? , 2001, Journal of Forestry.

[47]  Kelsi Bracmort.  Wildfire Management: Federal Funding and Related Statistics , 2013 .

[48]  Amy E. Thompson,et al.  Environmental learning and the social construction of an exurban landscape in Fremont County, Colorado , 2011 .

[49]  Alexandra D. Syphard,et al.  Land Use Planning and Wildfire: Development Policies Influence Future Probability of Housing Loss , 2013, PloS one.

[50]  W. Adger,et al.  Theory and Practice in Assessing Vulnerability to Climate Change andFacilitating Adaptation , 2000 .

[51]  Scott L. Goodrick,et al.  Locating Spatial Variation in the Association Between Wildland Fire Risk and Social Vulnerability Across Six Southern States , 2012, Environmental Management.

[52]  Amy L. Griffin,et al.  Social vulnerability in the context of bushfire risk at the urban-bush interface in Sydney: a case study of the Blue Mountains and Ku-ring-gai local council areas , 2012, Natural Hazards.

[53]  Daniel R. Williams,et al.  Stakeholder Understandings of Wildfire Mitigation: A Case of Shared and Contested Meanings , 2012, Environmental Management.

[54]  O. Karlsson,et al.  Development of a Methodology for the Assessment of Vulnerability Related to Wildland Fires Using a Multi-Criteria Evaluation , 2012 .

[55]  Eric Tate,et al.  Social vulnerability indices: a comparative assessment using uncertainty and sensitivity analysis , 2012, Natural Hazards.

[56]  Susan I. Stewart,et al.  Human influence on California fire regimes. , 2007, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[57]  Matthew P. Thompson,et al.  How risk management can prevent future wildfire disasters in the wildland-urban interface , 2013, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[58]  John B. Loomis,et al.  Valuing mortality impacts of smoke exposure from major southern California wildfires , 2012 .

[59]  Susan L. Cutter,et al.  Community variations in social vulnerability to Cascadia-related tsunamis in the U.S. Pacific Northwest , 2010 .

[60]  E. Niemi,et al.  Wildfire and poverty: an overview of the interactions among wildfires, fire-related programs, and poverty in the Western States , 2001 .

[61]  Lucas A. Garibaldi,et al.  Demography and socioeconomic vulnerability influence fire occurrence in Bariloche (Argentina) , 2013 .

[62]  Timothy W. Collins,et al.  Households, forests, and fire hazard vulnerability in the American West: A case study of a California community , 2005 .

[63]  J. Prestemon,et al.  Efficient and Equitable Design of Wildfire Mitigation Programs , 2007 .

[64]  Daniel R. Williams,et al.  Community Wildfire Protection Planning: The Importance of Framing, Scale, and Building Sustainable Capacity , 2012 .

[65]  Timothy W. Collins,et al.  Situating Hazard Vulnerability: People’s Negotiations with Wildfire Environments in the U.S. Southwest , 2009, Environmental management.

[66]  Matthew S Carroll,et al.  Understanding Social Complexity Within the Wildland–Urban Interface: A New Species of Human Habitation? , 2009, Environmental management.

[67]  Kevin D. Ash,et al.  Acceptable losses? The relative impacts of natural hazards in the United States, 1980-2009 , 2013 .

[68]  Jeffrey P. Prestemon,et al.  Comparing production function models for wildfire risk analysis in the wildland–urban interface , 2005 .

[69]  Timothy W. Collins,et al.  What Influences Hazard Mitigation? Household Decision Making About Wildfire Risks in Arizona's White Mountains , 2008 .

[70]  Carol Miller,et al.  Wildland-Urban Interface Maps Vary with Purpose and Context , 2009, Journal of Forestry.

[71]  Pamela J. Jakes,et al.  Interpreting federal policy at the local level: the wildland- urban interface concept in wildfire protection planning in the eastern United States , 2009 .

[72]  Susan I. Stewart,et al.  Human and biophysical influences on fire occurrence in the United States. , 2013, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[73]  Susan L. Cutter,et al.  Disaster disparities and differential recovery in New Orleans , 2010 .