Social and Ecological Index (SEI)

The SEI was derived by combining three separate sub-indices (social vulnerability, ecological value, and ecosystem services), each describing a set of characteristics or values that may be threatened if an uncharacteristic wildfire were to occur, and was designed to be agnostic to the actual likelihood of wildfire in a given location. Note that one sub-index, social vulnerability, was summarized at the level of U.S. census tracts. Values in this layer represent 10 quantiles (1 being lowest values of SEI, 10 being the highest), which were scaled relative to values within each U.S. Forest Service region.For full details, please see: Lacey LM, Suraci JP, Littlefield CE, Busse BS, Dickson BG. 2024. Informing proactive wildfire management that benefits vulnerable communities and ecological values.<i> People and Nature.</i>