The global wildland-urban interface.

ABSTRACT: The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is where buildings and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle^1,2. 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 diseases³. However, a global analysis of the WUI has been lacking. 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 area⁴ and wildland vegetation⁵. 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

SUBMITTER: Schug F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10482693 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature