The Relative Impacts of Vegetation, Topography and Spatial Arrangement on Building Loss to Wildfires in Case Studies of California and Colorado

Landscape Ecology, 31(2): 415-430, 2016

By: Springer

https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/49091
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Wildland-Urban Interface

This article presents findings from research that works to better understand the effects that vegetation, topography, and the spatial arrangement of buildings have on the probability of building loss in a wildfire event. It discusses case studies of two fires: San Diego, CA and Boulder, CO. It emphasizes that topography and the spatial arrangement of buildings are the two main factors affecting the variability in building losses.


Boulder, CO

2010 Population: 294,567

2010 Population Density: 405.58/square mile


San Diego, CA

2010 Population: 3,095,313

2010 Population Density: 735.82/square mile