Publication Date
5-2025
Date of Final Oral Examination (Defense)
2-19-2025
Type of Culminating Activity
Dissertation
Degree Title
Doctor of Philosophy in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior
Department
Biological Sciences
Supervisory Committee Chair
Megan E. Cattau, Ph.D.
Supervisory Committee Member
T. Trevor Caughlin, Ph.D.
Supervisory Committee Member
Jodi S. Brandt, Ph.D.
Supervisory Committee Member
Rebecca Som Castellano, Ph.D.
Abstract
Wildfire is indiscriminate in its impacts, affecting communities, ecosystems, and landscapes regardless of borders or distinctions. As a social-ecological disturbance, wildfire embodies complex, interdependent interactions between humans and the natural environment and poses significant challenges for management. From residential properties to public lands, human-wildfire interactions occur along a continuum from dense urban centers to natural landscapes. There is an urgent need to better understand these dynamics, especially in the context of growing human pressures on natural systems, shifting wildfire activity, and climate change, which can amplify human exposure to wildfire risks. Focusing on the western United States, this research examines key aspects of human-wildfire interactions to advance proactive fire prevention and risk reduction strategies. Land use and land cover maps can be a useful tool for informing decision-making and improving hazard response and mitigation efforts, such as in the context of wildfires, but some existing maps are limited in their ability to identify building types. Chapter One leveraged remote sensing technologies and cloud computing to produce annually resolved maps of built infrastructure across the Snake River Plain in southern Idaho. We demonstrate that finer resolution maps that distinguish between residential and other infrastructure types can be generated from freely available remote sensing imagery and open source software that leverages data fusion with multispectral and radar imagery. Improved infrastructure maps advance our understanding of the wildland-urban interface (WUI), a prevailing term to describe areas where human and natural fire-prone systems meet and intermingle. However, the WUI concept has no unanimous definition, and methodologies for WUI mapping are highly varied. In Chapter Two, a critical review of the WUI concept, we demonstrate that the definition of the WUI profoundly shapes how it is mapped and interpreted, with implications for wildfire risk assessment, resource allocation, decision making and policy development. We emphasize the importance of adopting WUI definitions and methodologies that are flexible, tailored to local challenges, focus on proactive fire prevention, and involve collaboration between researchers and practitioners. WUI landscapes can be diverse, but human presence and proximity to vegetated lands is a consistent characteristic. A nexus for human-wildfire interactions, WUI spaces have drawn attention to the ways human behaviors contribute to, mitigate, and prevent wildfires. This focus has grown as human activity is increasingly recognized as a key driver of shifting wildfire patterns across the US. Less attention, however, has been directed towards areas adjacent to the WUI, such as public lands, where people engage in recreational activities. Chapter Three employed a multi-scale approach to explore wildfire ignition sources and patterns on public lands managed under the Bureau of Land Management National Conservation Lands system. We reveal that wildfire occurrences on these lands have increased, irrespective of whether the ignition cause is natural or anthropogenic. Further, natural ignitions dominate in most areas. However, the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, southern Idaho, emerged as hotspot for human-caused ignitions, particularly due to firearms, explosives use, equipment and vehicle use. National ignition patterns show higher natural ignitions in the non-coastal western US, but our findings highlight this area as a notable anomaly. This offers valuable insights into potential future conditions on other public lands, underscoring the need for targeted outreach, stronger regulatory measures, and improved fire-cause reporting standards to reduce human-caused ignitions. Collectively, this work advances our understanding of human-wildfire interactions both quantitatively and qualitatively. By prioritizing accurate, reliable data - from land use and land cover mapping to ignition source attribution - this research provides a foundation for more effective fire prevention strategies, targeted education and outreach efforts, and efforts to reduce human exposure to wildfire risk in an era of intensifying fire activity. Furthermore, by critically examining how such data can be used to define targeted areas and inform decision-making, this research advances knowledge of how data can be responsibly leveraged to shape more effective and equitable wildfire management practices.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18122/td.2326.boisestate
Recommended Citation
Dolman, Megan R., "From Properties to Public Lands: Human and Wildfire Interactions Across the Western United States" (2025). Boise State University Theses and Dissertations. 2326.
https://doi.org/10.18122/td.2326.boisestate
Comments
ORCID: 0000-0002-4084-8378