Geology topics

Amanda Renee Carlson

Publications and source records attributed to Amanda Renee Carlson.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2026

Adapting wildfire risk assessment for a Tribal landscape: Mount Baldy and the Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona

Context The White Mountain Apache Tribe of the Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona manages their natural and cultural resources within a perpetually wildfire-risky environment. The Tribe’s values also extend beyond those of typical risk assessments to include the importance of cultural activities and sites, various recreational and revenue values, and culturally significant species. Objectives We worked with the Tribe to characterize a sample of these values and adapt them for use in a widely used risk assessment framework as part of an ongoing effort to improve wildfire mitigation and management with Tribes. Methods We used a three-factor experimental design to conduct a sensitivity analysis related to the treatment of values included in the risk assessment. It focused on (1) the inclusion of relative importance or not, (2) the inclusion of relative extent or not, and (3) absolute versus scaled net value change for each value. Results Our results demonstrate a pattern of risk related to the values expressed by the Tribe with a focus on the Mount Baldy landscape, but the contributions of individual values to an aggregate measure of risk vary. Conclusions Our assessments demonstrate an opportunity to incorporate Tribal values. Different depictions of risk can be used to accommodate diverse perspectives of decision-makers or managers, the values they are considering, and whether or not they are approaching risk in an emergency response or preparedness frame.

Arizona↗

USGS2025

Rising rates of wildfire building destruction in the conterminous United States

Many regions of the world have seen an increase in highly destructive wildfires, driven by well-documented increases in burned area and growth of housing in the wildland–urban interface (WUI), which exposes more homes to fire. However, it is unclear whether wildfires are also becoming more destructive due to changes in wildfire behavior or in the development patterns of exposed communities. Here, we assessed trends in wildfire building exposure and destruction rates in the conterminous United States from 2002 to 2022. We mapped destroyed and surviving buildings within 100 m of all wildfires that destroyed 10 or more buildings (n = 362) and assessed trends relative to major ecoregions and vegetation types. We used logistic regression to assess relationships between destruction rates and landscape factors. We found that 10% of exposed buildings were destroyed in 2002–2012, but this percentage increased to 32% in 2013–2022. This increase was largely due to greater building exposure in evergreen forests in the northwestern United States, where exposed buildings were more than 3.4 times as likely to be destroyed as those in grass and shrublands. However, annual destruction rates also significantly increased in all other vegetation types and were correlated with development type, weather, and burn severity. These results indicate that increasing wildfire destruction in the United States has resulted not only from increased exposure but from rising rates of building destruction, potentially indicating more extreme wildfire behavior. This finding underscores the need to better understand how fuel management, community planning, and hardening buildings can reduce vulnerability.

conterminous United States↗

USGS2025

Evaluating a simulation-based wildfire burn probability map for the conterminous US

Background Wildfire simulation models are used to derive maps of burn probability (BP) based on fuels, weather, topography and ignition locations, and BP maps are key components of wildfire risk assessments. Aims Few studies have compared BP maps with real-world fires to evaluate their suitability for near-future risk assessment. Here, we evaluated a BP map for the conterminous US based on the large fire simulation model FSim. Methods We compared BP with observed wildfires from 2016 to 2022 across 128 regions representing similar fire regimes (‘pyromes’). We evaluated the distribution of burned areas across BP values, and compared burned area distributions among fire size classes. Key results Across all pyromes, mean BP was moderately correlated with observed burned area. An average of 71% of burned area occurred in higher-BP classes, vs 79% expected. BP underpredicted burned area in the Mountain West, especially for extremely large fires. Conclusions The FSim BP map was useful for estimating subsequent wildfire hazard, but may have underestimated burned areas where input data did not reflect recent climate change, vegetation change or human ignition patterns. Implications Our evaluations indicate that caution is needed when relying on simulation-based BP maps to inform management decisions. Our results also highlight potential opportunities to improve model estimates.

Conterminous United States↗

USGS2023

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 can be 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. 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 area and wildland vegetation . 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 of the global WUI. The WUI covers only 4.7% of the land surface but is home to nearly half its population (3.5 billion). The WUI is especially widespread in Europe (15% of the land area) and the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome (18%). Of all people living near 2003–2020 wildfires (0.4 billion), two thirds have their home in the WUI, most of them in Africa (150 million). Given that wildfire activity is predicted to increase because of climate change in many regions , there is a need to understand housing growth and vegetation patterns as drivers of WUI change.

Nature↗