Data from: Factors related to building loss due to wildfires in the conterminous United States

Wildfire is globally an important ecological disturbance affecting
biochemical cycles, and vegetation composition, but also puts people and
their homes at risk. Suppressing wildfires has detrimental ecological
effects and can promote larger and more intense wildfires when fuels
accumulate, which increases the threat to buildings in the Wildland Urban
Interface (WUI). Yet, when wildfires occur, typically only a small
proportion of the buildings within the fire perimeter are lost, and the
question is what determines which buildings burn. Our goal was to examine
which factors are related to building loss when a wildfire occurs
throughout the United States. We were particularly interested in the
relative roles of vegetation, topography, and the spatial arrangement of
buildings, and how their respective roles vary among ecoregions. We
analyzed all fires that occurred within the conterminous U.S. from 2000 to
2010 and digitized which buildings were lost and which survived according
to Google Earth historical imagery. We modeled the occurrence as well as
the percentage of buildings lost within clusters using logistic and linear
regression. Overall, variables related to topography and the spatial
arrangement of buildings were more frequently present in the best 20
regression models than vegetation-related variables. In other words,
specific locations in the landscape have a higher fire risk, and certain
development patterns can exacerbate that risk. Fire policies and
prevention efforts focused on vegetation management are important, but
insufficient to solve current wildfire problems. Furthermore, the factors
associated with building loss varied considerably among ecoregions
suggesting that fire policy applied uniformly across the US will not work
equally well in all regions and that efforts to adapt communities to
wildfires must be regionally tailored.