The Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) is the area where houses meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland vegetation. This makes the WUI a focal area for human-environment conflicts such as wildland fires, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and biodiversity decline. Using geographic information systems (GIS), we integrated U.S. Census and USGS National Land Cover Data, to map the Federal Register definition of WUI (Federal Register 66:751, 2001) for the conterminous United States from 1990-2020. These data are useful within a GIS for mapping and analysis at national, state, and local levels. Data are available as a geodatabase and include information such as housing densities for 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020; wildland vegetation percentages for 1992, 2001, 2011, and 2019; as well as WUI classes in 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020.This WUI feature class is separate from the WUI datasets maintained by individual forest unites, and it is not the authoritative source data of WUI for forest units. This dataset shows change over time in the WUI data up to 2020.Metadata and Downloads

Downloads and additional Metadata. A tiled map service depicting wildland urban interface data for 2010. The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where houses meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland vegetation. This makes the WUI a focal area for human-environment conflicts such as wildland fires, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and biodiversity decline. Using geographic information systems (GIS), we integrated U.S. Census and USGS National Land Cover Data, to map the Federal Register definition of WUI (Federal Register 66:751, 2001) for the conterminous United States for 2010. These data are useful within a GIS for mapping and analysis at national, state, and local levels. Data are available as a feature class and include information such as housing and population densities for 2010; wildland vegetation percentages for 2011; as well as WUI class in 2010. This WUI feature class is separate from the WUI datasets maintained by individual forest units, and it is not the authoritative source data of WUI for forest units. This map service shows the WUI data for 2010 only.

This is a polygon data set depicting the areas designated by the City of Boise as Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI). WUI is defined as the area where structures and other human development meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland. These areas have an increased likelihood that wildfires will threaten structures and people. The purpose of the dataset is to define areas with higher wildfire risk and subject those areas to increased FIREWISE standards for development.As a result of the Oregon Trail Heights fire in the late summer of 2008, the City Council passed Ordinance # 0-7A-10 adopting the new regulations for the WUI into the City’s fire code in early 2010. The ordinance establishes a range of responses including new fire code standards for construction, fuels mitigation and education in WUI areas.

Downloads and additional Metadata. A tiled map service depicting wildland urban interface data for 1990. The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where houses meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland vegetation. This makes the WUI a focal area for human-environment conflicts such as wildland fires, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and biodiversity decline. Using geographic information systems (GIS), we integrated U.S. Census and USGS National Land Cover Data, to map the Federal Register definition of WUI (Federal Register 66:751, 2001) for the conterminous United States for 1990. These data are useful within a GIS for mapping and analysis at national, state, and local levels. Data are available as a feature class and include information such as housing and population densities for 1990; wildland vegetation percentages for 1991; as well as WUI class in 1990. This WUI feature class is separate from the WUI datasets maintained by individual forest units, and it is not the authoritative source data of WUI for forest units. This map service shows the WUI data for 1990 only.

ORS 477.490 requires Oregon Sate University (OSU) and the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) to develop a statewide wildland-urban interface (WUI) map that will be used in conjunction with the statewide wildfire hazard map (ORS 477.490) by the Oregon State Fire Marshal to determine on which properties defensible space standards apply (ORS 476.392) and by the Building Codes Division to determine to which structures home hardening building codes apply (ORS 455.612).Rules directing development of the WUI are listed in OAR-629-044-1011 and 629-044-1016. A comprehensive description of datasets and geospatial processing is available at https://hazardmap.forestry.oregonstate.edu/understand-map. The official statewide WUI map is available on the Oregon Wildfire Risk Explorer at https://tools.oregonexplorer.info/viewer/wildfire.Following is an overview of the data and methods used develop the statewide WUI map.Wildland-Urban InterfaceCreating a statewide map of the WUI involved two general steps. First, we determined which parts of Oregon met the minimum building density requirements to be classified as WUI. Second, for those areas that met the minimum building density threshold, we evaluated the amount and proximity of wildland or vegetative fuels. Following is a summary of geospatial tasks used to create the WUI.Develop a potential WUI map of all areas that meet the minimum density of structures and other human development - According to OAR 629-044-1011, the boundary of Oregon’s WUI is defined in part as areas with a minimum building density of one building per 40 acres, the same threshold defined in the federal register (Executive Order 13728, 2016), and any area within an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) regardless of the building density. Step One characterizes all the locations in Oregon that could be considered for inclusion in the WUI on building density and UGB extent alone. The result of Step One was a map of potential WUI which was then further refined into final WUI map based on fuels density and proximity in Step Two.

OverviewORS 477.490 requires Oregon Sate University (OSU) and the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) to develop a statewide wildland-urban interface (WUI) map that will be used in conjunction with the statewide wildfire hazard map (ORS 477.490) by the Oregon State Fire Marshal to determine on which properties defensible space standards apply (ORS 476.392) and by the Building Codes Division to determine to which structures home hardening building codes apply (ORS 455.612).Rules directing development of the WUI are listed in OAR-629-044-1011 and 629-044-1016. A comprehensive description of datasets and geospatial processing is available at https://hazardmap.forestry.oregonstate.edu/understand-map. The official statewide WUI map is available on the Oregon Wildfire Risk Explorer at https://tools.oregonexplorer.info/viewer/wildfire.Following is an overview of the data and methods used develop the statewide WUI map.Wildland-Urban InterfaceCreating a statewide map of the WUI involved two general steps. First, we determined which parts of Oregon met the minimum building density requirements to be classified as WUI. Second, for those areas that met the minimum building density threshold, we evaluated the amount and proximity of wildland or vegetative fuels. Following is a summary of geospatial tasks used to create the WUI.Develop a potential WUI map of all areas that meet the minimum density of structures and other human development - According to OAR 629-044-1011, the boundary of Oregon’s WUI is defined in part as areas with a minimum building density of one building per 40 acres, the same threshold defined in the federal register (Executive Order 13728, 2016), and any area within an Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) regardless of the building density. Step One characterizes all the locations in Oregon that could be considered for inclusion in the WUI on building density and UGB extent alone. The result of Step One was a map of potential WUI which was then further refined into final WUI map based on fuels density and proximity in Step Two.Compile statewide tax lots.Map all eligible structures and other human development.Simplify structure dataset to no more than one structure per tax lotCalculate structure density and identify all areas with greater than one structure per 40 acresAdd urban growth boundaries to all the areas that meet the density requirements from the previous step.Classify WUI based on amount and proximity of fuel. The WUI is also defined by the density and proximity of wildland and vegetative fuels (“fuels”). By including density and proximity of fuels in the definition of the WUI, the urban core is excluded, and the focus is placed on those areas with sufficient building density and sufficient fuels to facilitate a WUI conflagration. Consistent with national standards, we further classified the WUI into three general classes to inform effective risk management strategies. The following describes how we refined the potential WUI output from step one into the final WUI map.Intermix WUI: Areas that met the minimum building density threshold in step one and which had at least 50% vegetative or wildland fuel cover were classified as Intermix WUIInterface WUI: Interface WUI includes areas that met the minimum building density threshold in step one, and which had less than 50% vegetative and/or wildland fuel cover but were within 1.5 miles of a large patch (≥ 2 sq. miles) of at least 75% vegetation and/or wildland fuelsOccluded WUI includes areas that met the minimum building density threshold in step one, and which had less than 50% vegetative and/or wildland fuel cover but were within 1.5 miles of a moderate patch (1 – 2 sq. miles) of at least 75% vegetation and/or wildland fuels.Detailed geospatial processing steps are described in the technical guide available at https://hazardmap.forestry.oregonstate.edu/understand-map

Downloads and additional Metadata. A tiled map service depicting wildland urban interface data for 2000. The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where houses meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland vegetation. This makes the WUI a focal area for human-environment conflicts such as wildland fires, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and biodiversity decline. Using geographic information systems (GIS), we integrated U.S. Census and USGS National Land Cover Data, to map the Federal Register definition of WUI (Federal Register 66:751, 2001) for the conterminous United States for 2000. These data are useful within a GIS for mapping and analysis at national, state, and local levels. Data are available as a feature class and include information such as housing and population densities for 2000; wildland vegetation percentages for 2001; as well as WUI class in 2000. This WUI feature class is separate from the WUI datasets maintained by individual forest units, and it is not the authoritative source data of WUI for forest units. This map service shows the WUI data for 2000 only.This record was taken from the USDA Enterprise Data Inventory that feeds into the https://data.gov catalog. Data for this record includes the following resources: ISO-19139 metadata ArcGIS Hub Dataset ArcGIS GeoService For complete information, please visit https://data.gov.

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where urban development occurs in close proximity to wildland vegetation. We generated WUI maps for the conterminous U.S. using building point locations (Carlson et al. 2022), offering higher spatial resolution compared to previously developed WUI maps based on U.S. Census Bureau housing density data (Radeloff et al., 2017). Building point locations were obtained from a Microsoft product released in 2018, which classified building footprints based on high-resolution satellite imagery. Maps were also based on wildland vegetation mapped by the 2016 National Land Cover Dataset (Yang et al., 2018). The mapping algorithm utilized definitions of the WUI from the U.S. Federal Register (USDA & USDI, 2001) and Radeloff et al. (2005). According to these definitions, two classes of WUI were identified: 1) the intermix, where there is at least 50% vegetation cover surrounding buildings, and 2) the interface, where buildings are within 2.4 km ...

Jackson County Community Fire Plan Map 5 showing the Wildland Urban Interface and Public Lands. The map document is 11 inches by 17 inches.

The Dept was required by SB 6109 to map the WUI in WA State for the purpose of county-based building code adoptions. The WUI depicts areas of WA where structures and wildland overlap with specific structure densities. View "Full Details" for Download Link. For more information about the WUI, please contact: Wildland Fire Management DivisionPO Box 470371111 Washington St SEOlympia, WA 98504-7037(360) 902-1300Download File Geodatabase and TIF here

A map with various base layers to be used as a template for creating thematic maps for the Napa County CWPP online maps. Most layers are from Napa County's online gis data catalog but some layers were derived from public data sources such as Wikipedia and others.This map highlights WUI areas as defined by CAL FIRE in their WUI 12_3 layer. Description below:This dataset adds housing density class (DEN4) and wildfire hazard (FHSZ) attributes to WUI12_2 - FRAP’s preliminary result in an effort to capture Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) for the 2015 Assessment. The current dataset is appropriate for displaying the overall pattern of WUI development at the county level, and comparing counties in terms of development patterns. Until the dataset is refined through a field review process, it is not suited for WUI designations for individual houses or neighborhoods.

Three WUI classes are mapped: 1) Wildland Urban Interface – dense housing adjacent to vegetation that can burn in a wildfire, 2) Wildland Urban Intermix - housing development interspersed in an area dominated by wildland vegetation subject to wildfire, and 3) Wildfire Influence Zone - wildfire susceptible vegetation up to 1.5 miles from Wildland Urban Interface or Wildland Urban Intermix.

Housing Density (DEN4) 1) Less than one house per 20 acres 2) One house per 20 acres to one house per 5 acres 3) More than one house per 5 acres to 1 house per acre 4) More than 1 house per acre

Fire Hazard Severity Zone (HAZ_NUM: 1=Moderate, 2=High, 3=Very High) Source: State Resposibility Areas (fhszs06_3), Local Responsibility Areas (fhszl11_1)

Intensifying wildfires and human settlement expansion have placed more people and infrastructure at the wildland–urban interface (WUI) areas under risk. Wildfire management and policy response are needed to protect ecosystems and residential communities; however, maps containing spatially explicit information on the distribution of WUI areas are limited to certain countries or local regions, and therefore global WUI patterns and associated wildfire exposure risk remain unclear. Here, we generated the global WUI data layers for 2020 baseline and 1985-2020 time series by incorporating fine-resolution housing and vegetation mapping. We estimated the total global WUI area to be 6.62 million km2. Time-series analysis revealed that global WUI areas experienced a substantial increase of 12.56% between 1985 and 2020. By overlapping 2001-2020 wildfire burned area maps and fine-resolution population dataset, our analysis revealed that globally, 7.07% (12.54%) of WUI areas housing 4.47 million (10.11 million) people are within a 2400-m (4800-m) buffer zone of wildfire threat. Regionally, we found that the United States, Brazil, China, India, and Australia account for the majority of WUI areas, but African countries experience higher wildfire risk. Our quantification of global WUI spatiotemporal patterns and the associated wildfire risk could support improvement of wildfire management.

The Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) is the area where houses meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland vegetation. This makes the WUI a focal area for human-environment conflicts such as wildland fires, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and biodiversity decline. Using geographic information systems (GIS), we integrated U.S. Census and USGS National Land Cover Data, to map the Federal Register definition of WUI (Federal Register 66:751, 2001) for the conterminous United States from 1990-2020. These data are useful within a GIS for mapping and analysis at national, state, and local levels. Data are available as a geodatabase and include information such as housing densities for 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020; wildland vegetation percentages for 1992, 2001, 2011, and 2019; as well as WUI classes in 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020.To provide a spatially detailed national assessment of the wildland-urban interface (WUI) and WUI change between 1990 and 2020 across the coterminous U.S. to support wildland fire research, policy and management, and inquiries into the effects of housing growth on the environment.This data publication, published on 08/09/2023 is a fourth edition. The first edition (https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2015-0012) contained data representing the 2010 WUI of the conterminous United States. The second edition (https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2015-0012-2) contained data that represented the 1990-2010 WUI. The third edition (https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2015-0012-3) contains data that represent the 1990-2020 WUI.

This fourth edition uses an improved PLA housing density dataset to classify WUI from 1990-2020. This involved updating the public land adjustment (PLA) process (step 1) by correcting topological errors and removing erroneous sliver polygons generated during the PLA process.

On 09/16/2024, minor metadata updates were made, which included updating URLs for associated articles.

Information about WUI can also be found here: http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/data/wui-change as well as https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/nrs/projects/wuigrowth.

Maps of California's Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) generated using the Time Step Moving Window (TSMW) method outlined in the paper "Remapping California's Wildland Urban Interface: A Property-Level Time-Space Framework, 2000-2020".

Please cite the original paper:

Berg, Aleksander K, Dylan S. Connor, Peter Kedron, and Amy E. Frazier. 2024. “Remapping California’s Wildland Urban Interface: A Property-Level Time-Space Framework, 2000–2020.” Applied Geography 167 (June): 103271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2024.103271.

WUI maps were generated using Zillow ZTRAX parcel level attributes joined with FEMA USA Structures building footprints and the National Land Cover Database (NLCD).

All files are geotiff rasters with WUI areas mapped at a ~30m resolution. A raster value of null indicates not WUI, raster value of 1 indicates intermix WUI, and a raster value of 2 indicates interface WUI.

Three WUI maps were generated using structures built on of before the years indicated below:

2000 - "CA_WUI_2000.tif"

2010 - "CA_WUI_2010.tif"

2020 - "CA_WUI_2020.tif"

Acknowledgments -

We thank our reviewers and editors for helping us to improve the manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge access to the Zillow Transaction and Assessment Dataset (ZTRAX) through a data use agreement between the University of Colorado Boulder, Arizona State University, and Zillow Group, Inc. More information on accessing the data can be found at http://www.zillow.com/ztrax. The results and opinions are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the position of Zillow Group. Support by Zillow Group Inc. is acknowledged. We thank Johannes Uhl and Stefan Leyk for their great work in preparing the original dataset. For feedback and comments, we also thank Billie Lee Turner II, Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen, and participants at the 2022 Global Conference on Economic Geography, the 2022 Young Economic Geographers Network meeting, and the 2023 annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. Funding for our work has been provided by Arizona State University's Institute of Social Science Research (ISSR) Seed Grant Initiative. Additional funding was provided through the Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment program of the National Science Foundation, Award Number 1924670 to the University of Colorado Boulder, the Institute of Behavioral Science, Earth Lab, the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, the Grand Challenge Initiative and the Innovative Seed Grant program at the University of Colorado Boulder as well as the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers R21 HD098717 01A1 and P2CHD066613.

Due to the mixed distribution of buildings and vegetation, wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas are characterized by complex fuel distributions and geographical environments. The behavior of wildfires occurring in the WUI often leads to severe hazards and significant damage to man-made structures. Therefore, WUI areas warrant more attention during the wildfire season. Due to the ever-changing dynamic nature of California’s population and housing, the update frequency and resolution of WUI maps that are currently used can no longer meet the needs and challenges of wildfire management and resource allocation for suppression and mitigation efforts. Recent developments in remote sensing technology and data analysis algorithms pose new opportunities for improving WUI mapping methods. WUI areas in California were directly mapped using building footprints extracted from remote sensing data by Microsoft along with the fuel vegetation cover from the LANDFIRE dataset in this study. To accommodate...

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is where buildings and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle. It is where human-environmental conflicts and risks are concentrated, including the loss of houses and lives to wildfire, habitat loss and fragmentation, and the spread of zoonotic diseases. However, a global analysis of the WUI has been lacking.

This dataset features a global, 10 m resolution map of the wildland-urban interface that was developed in a recent study by the authors of this dataset (see corresponding publication).

Temporal extent

The data contains data representative for ca. 2020.

Data format and units

The data are organized in tiles of 100 km x 100 km and follow the EQUI7 tiling grid and projection system. The images are compressed GeoTiff files (.tif). There is a mosaic in GDAL Virtual format (.vrt), which can readily be opened in most Geographic Information Systems. Please consider the generation of image pyramids before using *.vrt files.

The raster dataset contains Wildland-urban interface (WUI) data (one layer), 10 m spatial resolution, 8 discrete classes:

1 - Forest/Shrubland/Wetland-dominated Intermix WU

2 - Forest/Shrubland/Wetland-dominated Interface WUI

3 - Grassland-dominated Intermix WUI

4 - Grassland -dominated Interface WUI

5 - Non-WUI: Forest/Shrub/Wetland-dominated

6 - Non-WUI: Grassland-dominated

7 - Non-WUI: Urban

8 - Non-WUI: Other

In addition, the data contain tabular data on WUI area, population and biomass in the WUI, as well as wildfire area and people affected by wildfire in the WUI per world region, country, subnational administrative unit and biome.

The data also contain the key algorithm for WUI mapping (also accessible here: https://github.com/franzschug/global_wildland_urban_interface).

Further information

For further information, please see the publication or contact Franz Schug (fschug@wisc.edu). Visit the website of SILVIS lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison (http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/globalwui) to learn more about the Wildland-Urban Interface.

The data can be interactively visualizes in a web viewer here.

Corresponding publication

Schug, Franz*; Bar-Massada, Avi; Carlson, Amanda R.; Cox, Heather; Hawbaker, Todd J.; Helmers, David; Hostert, Patrick; Kaim, Dominik; Kasraee, Neda K.; Martinuzzi, Sebastián; Mockrin, Miranda H.; Pfoch, Kira A.; Radeloff, Volker C. The global wildland-urban interface, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06320-0

Funding

This research was funded by the NASA Land Cover and Land Use Change Program under agreement 80NSSC21K0310.

Link to the ScienceBase Item Summary page for the item described by this metadata record. Service Protocol: Link to the ScienceBase Item Summary page for the item described by this metadata record. Application Profile: Web Browser. Link Function: information

This dataset provides global wildland-urban interface (WUI) maps at a spatial resolution of 30 meters for the years 2000, 2010, and 2020. The WUI is defined as areas where the 200-meter buffers of urban areas (characterized by artificial surfaces) intersect with the 400-meter buffers of wildland areas, including forests, shrublands, and grasslands. These maps are produced based on land cover classification results from the GlobeLand30 datasets.

Projection Information:
The projection information aligns with GlobeLand30 standards:

• Projection: UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) for latitudes from S85 to N85, using a 6-degree zone system without zone numbers.
• Polar Azimuthal Projection: Applicable for latitudes from S85 to N90 and N85 to N90, with the projection surface intersecting at the South and North Poles.

Naming Convention:
The file naming convention is as follows:

Where:

• L = Latitude code (N for the Northern Hemisphere, S for the Southern Hemisphere)
• HH = Number of UTM zone
• VV = Starting latitude of the tile (each tile crosses 5° latitude)
• YYYY = Year mapped
• lc = Land cover abbreviation
• 030 = Spatial resolution of 30 meters

Example File Name:
For instance, the file named WUI_n15_45_2020lc030.tif can be interpreted as follows:

• WUI: Wildland-Urban Interface dataset
• n: Northern latitude
• 15: UTM zone 15
• 45: Starting latitude of 45 degrees
• 2020: Product year of 2020
• lc: Land cover classification
• 030: Spatial resolution of 30 meters

This dataset was developed for the 2015 Assessment of Forest and Rangelands. It is derived from several data sources, including housing density (input_lsn_HousingDensity12_2), Fire Hazard Severity Zones (FHSZ_Assessment11_1), Unimproved Parcels (input_UnimprovedParcels16_1), and Vegetation Cover (input_FVEG15_2). The current dataset is appropriate for displaying the overall pattern of WUI development at the county level, and comparing counties in terms of development patterns. Until the dataset is refined through a field review process, it is not suited for WUI designations for individual houses or neighborhoods. Housing Density Classes used in the WUI definitions: 1 - Less than one house per 20 acres 2 - One house per 20 acres to one house per 5 acres 3 - More than one house per 5 acres to 1 house per acre 4 - More than 1 house per acreWildland Urban Interface is dense housing adjacent to vegetation that can burn in a wildfire and must meet these criteria: •Housing density class 2, 3 or 4 •In moderate, high, or very high Fire Hazard Severity Zone •Not dominated by wildland vegetation (i.e., lifeform not herbaceous, hardwood, conifer or shrub) •Spatially contiguous groups of 30m cells that are10 acres and largerWildland Urban Intermix is housing development interspersed in an area dominated by wildland vegetation subject to wildfire and must meet these criteria: •Not Interface •Housing density class 2 •Housing density class 3, 4 dominated by wildland vegetation •In Moderate, High or Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone •Improved parcels only •Spatially contiguous groups of 30m cells 25 acres and largerWildfire Influence Zone is wildfire susceptible vegetation up to 1.5 miles from Wildland Urban Interface or Wildland Urban Intermix and must meet these criteria: •Wildland vegetation up to 1.5 miles from Interface or Intermix

Important Note: This item is in mature support as of April 2024 and will be retired in December 2026. A new version of this item is available for your use. Esri recommends updating your maps and apps to use the new version. Wildfires in the wildland urban interface, places where developed areas meet and are intermixed with natural vegetation, are often difficult to fight and result in significant losses of homes and other property. As more areas on or near the wildland urban interface have been developed, management of vegetation and fire have become a central focus of land managers. Dataset SummaryThis layer provides access to a 1 km cell size raster of areas in the wildland urban interface. The layer was produced by intersecting areas with high fire risk and housing density data from the U.S. Census. The data cover the continental U.S.This dataset was produced as part of the publication Expansion of the US Wildland-Urban Interface.What can you do with this layer?This layer can be used with ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Desktop to create maps and to visualize and analyze the underlying data. For analysis, the maximum request size for analysis is restricted to 24,000 rows x 24,000 columns.This layer is part of a larger collection of landscape layers that you can use to perform a wide variety of mapping and analysis tasks.