Publications by authors named "Patricia M Alexandre"
Article Synopsis
- Wildfire risks to homes are rising, particularly in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), where vegetation and houses are close together.
- More homes are being impacted by grassland and shrubland fires compared to forest fires, although forest fires are more destructive when they occur.
- The number of houses in wildfire areas has doubled since the 1990s due to housing growth and increased burned areas, with significant growth in WUI housing noted in the 2010s.
Rapid growth of the US wildland-urban interface raises wildfire risk.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
March 2018
The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where houses and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle, and where wildfire problems are most pronounced. Here we report that the WUI in the United States grew rapidly from 1990 to 2010 in terms of both number of new houses (from 30.8 to 43.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWildfire is globally an important ecological disturbance affecting biochemical cycles and vegetation composition, but also puts people and their homes at risk. Suppressing wildfires has detrimental ecological effects and can promote larger and more intense wildfires when fuels accumulate, which increases the threat to buildings in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Yet, when wildfires occur, typically only a small proportion of the buildings within the fire perimeter are lost, and the question is what determines which buildings burn.
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