- Metric Name:  Wildland Urban Interface

- Data Vintage:  2020

- Unit Of Measure: Categorical

The wildland urban interface (WUI) is the area where urban development is in close proximity to wildland vegetation. WUI data for the conterminous U.S. based on 125 million building locations where buildings intermingle with or abut wildland vegetation according to the Federal Register definitions of the WUI. According to the definitions used for our building-based maps and for the census-based maps, WUI is where building density exceeds 6.17 units/km2 and where land cover is either (1) at least 50% wildland vegetation (intermix) or (2) under 50% wildland vegetation but within 2.4 km (1.5 miles) of a patch of wildland vegetation at least 5 km2 in area that contains at least 75% vegetation (interface). The distance selected for the interface definition is based on research from the California Fire Alliance suggesting that this is the average distance firebrands can travel from an active wildfire front (Stewart et al., 2007).

Creation Method: Building point locations were obtained from a Microsoft product released in 2018, updated to 2019-2020 for most of California, 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). Both classes required a minimum building density of 6.17 buildings per km2. This map of intermix and interface WUI was generated using a circular neighborhood size based on radius distance of 100m to determine building density and vegetation cover on a pixel-by-pixel basis (Bar Massada et al., 2013). Source: USGS ScienceBase Data Catalog; https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/617bfb43d34ea58c3c70038f

Values in the raster are defined as:

- 0: Not WUI

- 1: Intermix WUI

- 2: Interface WUI

- Credits:  WUI, Carlson et al, 2022

Carlson, Amanda R.,
David P. Helmers, Todd J. Hawbaker, Miranda
H. Mockrin, and Volker C. Radeloff. 2022. “The
Wildland–Urban Interface in the United States
Based on 125 Million Building Locations.”
Ecological Applications e2597. https://doi.
org/10.1002/eap.259: