NDLI: The relative impacts of vegetation, topography and spatial arrangement on building loss to wildfires in case studies of California and Colorado

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Alexandre, Patricia M. Stewart, Susan I. Mockrin, Miranda H. Keuler, Nicholas S. Syphard, Alexandra D. Bar Massada, Avi Clayton, Murray K. Radeloff, Volker C.
Copyright Year	2015
Abstract	Wildfires destroy thousands of buildings every year in the wildland urban interface. However, fire typically only destroys a fraction of the buildings within a given fire perimeter, suggesting more could be done to mitigate risk if we understood how to configure residential landscapes so that both people and buildings could survive fire.Our goal was to understand the relative importance of vegetation, topography and spatial arrangement of buildings on building loss, within the fire’s landscape context.We analyzed two fires: one in San Diego, CA and another in Boulder, CO. We analyzed Google Earth historical imagery to digitize buildings exposed to the fires, a geographic information system to measure some of the explanatory variables, and FRAGSTATS to quantify landscape metrics. Using logistic regression we conducted an exhaustive model search to select the best models.The type of variables that were important varied across communities. We found complex spatial effects and no single model explained building loss everywhere, but topography and the spatial arrangement of buildings explained most of the variability in building losses. Vegetation connectivity was more important than vegetation type.Location and spatial arrangement of buildings affect which buildings burn in a wildfire, which is important for urban planning, building siting, landscape design of future development, and to target fire prevention, fuel reduction, and homeowner education efforts in existing communities. Landscape context of buildings and communities is an important aspect of building loss, and if taken into consideration, could help communities adapt to fire.
Starting Page	415
Ending Page	430
Page Count	16
File Format	PDF
ISSN	09212973
Journal	Landscape Ecology
Volume Number	31
Issue Number	2
e-ISSN	15729761
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2015-08-18
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Subject Keyword	WUI Building loss Wildfires FRAGSTATS Logistic regression Best-subsets Landscape Ecology Plant Ecology Forestry Management Forestry Ecology Plant Sciences
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Geography, Planning and Development Ecology Nature and Landscape Conservation

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in