Biotic and Abiotic Effects of Human Settlements in the Wildland–Urban Interface

Bar‐Massada, Avi; Radeloff, Volker C.; Stewart, Susan I.

doi:10.1093/biosci/biu039

Cited by 122 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Furthermore, only structural and infrastructure values that have the potential to be vulnerable to wildland fire were included, thus leaving out nonstructural values such as: aesthetic, ecological, economic (including recreational loses and timber losses) and cultural values. It should also be noted that these maps have been defined with wildfire-focused parameters, and as such, may not be entirely appropriate for applications related to other human natural issues, such as: biodiversity impacts, forestry, wildlife management, land-cover conversion and habitat fragmentation (as discussed in Radeloff et al (2005) and Bar-Massada et al (2014)). …”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Canadian wildland fire interface areas

Johnston

Flannigan

2018

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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Abstract. Destruction of human-built structures occurs in the 'wildland-urban interface' (WUI) -where homes or other burnable community structures meet with or are interspersed within wildland fuels. To mitigate WUI fires, basic information such as the location of interface areas is required, but such information is not available in Canada. Therefore, in this study, we produced the first national map of WUI in Canada. We also extended the WUI concept to address potentially vulnerable industrial structures and infrastructure that are not traditionally part of the WUI, resulting in two additional maps: a 'wildland-industrial interface' map (i.e. the interface of wildland fuels and industrial structures, denoted here as WUI-Ind) and a 'wildland-infrastructure interface' map (i.e. the interface of wildland fuels and infrastructure such as roads and railways, WUI-Inf). All three interface types (WUI, WUI-Ind, WUI-Inf) were defined as areas of wildland fuels within a variable-width buffer (maximum distance: 2400 m) from potentially vulnerable structures or infrastructure. Canada has 32.3 million ha of WUI (3.8% of total national land area), 10.5 million ha of WUI-Ind (1.2%) and 109.8 million ha of WUI-Inf (13.0%). The maps produced here provide a baseline for future research and have a wide variety of practical applications.

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Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Canadian wildland fire interface areas

Johnston

Flannigan

2018

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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“…Although higher density development could result in larger local ecological impacts, most research suggests that clustered, high-density development patterns substantially reduce the overall impact of development on wildlife habitat (Odell et al 2003) and that exurban, rural development may result in disproportionately high negative effects on biodiversity and ecological processes (Hansen et al 2005, Bar-Massada et al 2014). In our study area, the clustered, infill-type development that occurred under the fire hazard and biodiversity selection scenarios also resulted in lower edge and fragmentation, which have long been associated with biodiversity decline (Turner 1989, Fahrig 2003, McGarigal et al 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Setting priorities for private land conservation in fire-prone landscapes: Are fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation competing or compatible objectives?

Syphard¹,

Butsic²,

Bar‐Massada³

et al. 2016

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Although wildfire plays an important role in maintaining biodiversity in many ecosystems, fire management to protect human assets is often carried out by different agencies than those tasked for conserving biodiversity. In fact, fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation are often viewed as competing objectives. Here we explored the role of management through private land conservation and asked whether we could identify private land acquisition strategies that fulfill the mutual objectives of biodiversity conservation and fire risk reduction, or whether the maximization of one objective comes at a detriment to the other. Using a fixed budget and number of homes slated for development, we simulated 20 years of housing growth under alternative conservation selection strategies, and then projected the mean risk of fires destroying structures and the area and configuration of important habitat types in San Diego County, California, USA. We found clear differences in both fire risk projections and biodiversity impacts based on the way conservation lands are prioritized for selection, but these differences were split between two distinct groupings. If no conservation lands were purchased, or if purchases were prioritized based on cost or likelihood of development, both the projected fire risk and biodiversity impacts were much higher than if conservation lands were purchased in areas with high fire hazard or high species richness. Thus, conserving land focused on either of the two objectives resulted in nearly equivalent mutual benefits for both. These benefits not only resulted from preventing development in sensitive areas, but they were also due to the different housing patterns and arrangements that occurred as development was displaced from those areas. Although biodiversity conflicts may still arise using other fire management strategies, this study shows that mutual objectives can be attained through land-use planning in this region. These results likely generalize to any place where high species richness overlaps with hazardous wildland vegetation.

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“…Land conversion into urban areas contributes necessarily to landscape fragmentation, since buildings constitute a barrier to species movement. Given that land can be used in many different spatial patterns, and some patterns represent a higher degree of landscape fragmentation than others (Fahrig 2003), metrics that consider the spatial arrangement of urban areas (e.g., DIS) should explain landscape fragmentation better than aspatial metrics (Theobald et al 1997;Lin and Fuller 2013;Bar-Massada et al 2014). However, the differences in the explanatory power of DIS and PUA together versus PUA alone were small.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-scale mismatches between urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation create windows of opportunity for conservation development

2016

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ContextUrban sprawl and the expanding transportation infrastructure drive land consumption and landscape fragmentation, causing environmental deterioration and loss of species. Current understanding of how these drivers interact to shape landscape fragmentation is still poor. However, a strong correlation between urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation patterns is commonly assumed. Objectives Our main objective was to test the strength, non-stationarity, and scale-dependency of the relationship between urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation patterns ('sprawl-fragmentation relationship'). Subsequently, we propose an extended framework for the links between urban sprawl, expansion of transport infrastructure, and landscape fragmentation.Methods We quantified spatial patterns of urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation for mainland Spain at multiple scales. We then fitted global regression models and geographically weighted regression models with metrics of landscape fragmentation and urban sprawl. Results Most variation in landscape fragmentation values (almost 80 % on average) is not explained by urban sprawl metrics through global modeling. Local models show substantial improvements in model performance, with an average of 37 % of the variance remaining unexplained. The contribution of urban sprawl to landscape fragmentation patterns varies locally and depends on scale, with higher contributions at coarser scales and at higher organizational levels. Conclusions Our investigation revealed three critical characteristics of the sprawl-fragmentation relationship: it does not prevail, is non-stationary, and scale-dependent. We propose four mechanisms that may have resulted in this mismatch: scale, time-lagged development, spatial arrangement of development, and other external variables including teleconnections. These spatial mismatches provide windows of opportunity for conservation through better development strategies.

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Biotic and Abiotic Effects of Human Settlements in the Wildland–Urban Interface

Cited by 122 publications

References 52 publications

Mapping Canadian wildland fire interface areas

Mapping Canadian wildland fire interface areas

Setting priorities for private land conservation in fire-prone landscapes: Are fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation competing or compatible objectives?

Multi-scale mismatches between urban sprawl and landscape fragmentation create windows of opportunity for conservation development

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