10.5061/DRYAD.KD51C5B7S
Baker, William
0000-0002-4316-2646
University of Wyoming
Data from: Defensible-space treatment of <114,000 ha 40 m from
high-risk buildings near wildland vegetation could reduce loss in WUI
wildfire disasters across Colorado's 27 million ha
Dryad
dataset
2022
wildland-urban interface
FOS: Natural sciences
WUI
Wildfire disasters
Building loss
Landscape-scale fire
Colorado
2022-06-06T00:00:00Z
2022-06-06T00:00:00Z
en
108218342 bytes
10
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Context WUI wildfire disasters are increasing, as fires are pushed by
strong winds and drier fuels across landscapes and into communities.
Possible disasters make maintaining and restoring landscape-scale fire in
fire-adapted ecosystems difficult. Rapid action is needed to reduce
building loss in WUI wildfire disasters. Objectives In a Colorado
case study, I used distance-based empirical modeling to refine potential
risk of building loss in WUI wildfire disasters to focus risk-reduction
efforts. Methods New empirical modeling showed 95% of USA building loss
in WUI wildfire disasters was within 100 m of wildland vegetation. I used
modeling to estimate and map potential relative risk of a WUI wildfire
disaster for each of 2,185,953 buildings in Colorado. Results
High-risk buildings were 241,375 or 11% of total buildings. However, the
20-40 m essential defensible space around these buildings covered only
46,767- 114,084 ha. Area within 100 m of wildland vegetation, containing
these buildings, covered 475,840 ha or 1.8% of Colorado’s 27 million ha.
About 95% of at-risk land within 100 m of wildland vegetation is not
federally owned, and WUI wildfire disasters are mostly from fires started
on private land. Conclusions Treating ≤114,084 ha of defensible space
could leave the 27 million ha of Colorado with lower WUI wildfire
disaster-risk to buildings. High risk of building loss is rarely a federal
land-management problem. If the goal is rapid reduction of building loss
in WUI wildfire disasters, focus resources on defensible space 20-40 m
from WUI buildings within 100 m of wildland vegetation.
Downloaded Microsoft Building Footprint data, 2011 National Land Cover
data, then calculated building centroids, building density, percent cover
of wildland vegetation, and distance to wildland vegetation patches in
ArcGIS. Then, used these to classify each building into relative risk
categories for future WUI wildfire disasters following the Caggiano et al.
(2020) analysis of past WUI wildfire disasters in the USA.
See pdf and identical MS Word README document that both explain the datasets.