How can we optimize resources to protect houses from fire in America’s Wildland Urban Interface? A team of SILVIS researchers, lead by Avi Bar Massada, is exploring this question.
Ring of Fire
Jul 2010 - Houses & WUI
Houses & WUI
Housing growth is rampant, and much of it occurs in or near wildland vegetation, i.e., in the Wildland Urban Interface or WUI. Such housing growth is bringing homeowners closer to nature, which is great, but also posing numerous environmental problems including changes to fire regimes, introduction of invasive species, more human-wildlife conflicts, and habitat fragmentation.
Landscape History Determines Plant Invasions
Jan 2010 - Houses & WUI
- Land Use
How important is the past to understand present plant invasions? Gregorio Gavier Pizarro recently found that plant invasions may depend more on historic housing and road patterns than on today’s urban sprawl. To the contrary, contemporary forest fragmentation explained invasions better than fragmentation legacies.