#Us wildlife population density map drivers

The availability of buildings themselves as fuel, along with swiftly moving fire, makes evacuations difficult 19, 27, 28, 29. Wildfires are a particular threat to houses and lives, often caused by human ignition and facilitated by altered fire regimes where settlements sprawl into fire-dependent ecosystems. The WUI is a desirable place to live for many people as a result of its proximity to natural amenities but it is also an area of manifold hazards to both humans and natural ecosystems. However, the worldwide distribution of the WUI is unknown 2. The WUI is widespread across Australia, Europe and North America 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and there is evidence for WUI in some other countries 23, 24, 25, 26. The growth of settlements can have remote effects via teleconnected processes 15, 16 but the most immediate human–environmental conflicts arise where buildings are built in or near wildland vegetation, an area known as the wildland–urban interface (WUI) 1, 17. In particular, the expansion of the built environment and the growth of settlements and their long-term resource requirements have been dramatic across the globe 12, 13, 14. Humans have greatly affected the Earth’s land surface in recent centuries 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

#Us wildlife population density map drivers

Given that wildfire activity is predicted to increase because of climate change in many regions 6, there is a need to understand housing growth and vegetation patterns as drivers of WUI change. Of all people living near 2003–2020 wildfires (0.4 billion), two thirds have their home in the WUI, most of them in Africa (150 million). The WUI is especially widespread in Europe (15% of the land area) and the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome (18%).

The WUI covers only 4.7% of the land surface but is home to nearly half its population (3.5 billion). We show that the WUI is a global phenomenon, identify many previously undocumented WUI hotspots and highlight the wide range of population density, land cover types and biomass levels in different parts of the global WUI. Here, we present a global map of the 2020 WUI at 10 m resolution using a globally consistent and validated approach based on remote sensing-derived datasets of building area 4 and wildland vegetation 5. However, a global analysis of the WUI has been lacking. It is where human–environmental conflicts and risks can be concentrated, including the loss of houses and lives to wildfire, habitat loss and fragmentation and the spread of zoonotic diseases 3. The wildland–urban interface (WUI) is where buildings and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle 1, 2.