Map of the global wildland-urban interface

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is where buildings and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle. It is where human-environmental conflicts and risks are concentrated, including the loss of houses and lives to wildfire, habitat loss and fragmentation, and the spread of zoonotic diseases. However, a global analysis of the WUI has been lacking.

This dataset features a global, 10 m resolution map of the wildland-urban interface that was developed in a recent study by the authors of this dataset (see corresponding publication).

Temporal extent

The data contains data representative for ca. 2020.

Data format and units

The data are organized in tiles of 100 km x 100 km and follow the EQUI7 tiling grid and projection system. The images are compressed GeoTiff files (*.tif). There is a mosaic in GDAL Virtual format (*.vrt), which can readily be opened in most Geographic Information Systems. Please consider the generation of image pyramids before using *.vrt files.

The raster dataset contains Wildland-urban interface (WUI) data (one layer), 10 m spatial resolution, 8 discrete classes:

1 - Forest/Shrubland/Wetland-dominated Intermix WU

2 - Forest/Shrubland/Wetland-dominated Interface WUI

3 - Grassland-dominated Intermix WUI

4 - Grassland -dominated Interface WUI

5 - Non-WUI: Forest/Shrub/Wetland-dominated

6 - Non-WUI: Grassland-dominated

7 - Non-WUI: Urban

8 - Non-WUI: Other

In addition, the data contain tabular data on WUI area, population and biomass in the WUI, as well as wildfire area and people affected by wildfire in the WUI per world region, country, subnational administrative unit and biome.

The data also contain the key algorithm for WUI mapping (also accessible here: https://github.com/franzschug/global_wildland_urban_interface).

Further information

For further information, please see the publication or contact Franz Schug ([e-mail]). Visit the website of SILVIS lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison (http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/globalwui) to learn more about the Wildland-Urban Interface.

The data can be interactively visualizes in a web viewer here.

Corresponding publication

Schug, Franz*; Bar-Massada, Avi; Carlson, Amanda R.; Cox, Heather; Hawbaker, Todd J.; Helmers, David; Hostert, Patrick; Kaim, Dominik; Kasraee, Neda K.; Martinuzzi, Sebastián; Mockrin, Miranda H.; Pfoch, Kira A.; Radeloff, Volker C. The global wildland-urban interface, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06320-0

Funding

This research was funded by the NASA Land Cover and Land Use Change Program under agreement 80NSSC21K0310.