Wildland-Urban Interface Areas Have Increased by More Than 35% in the Past Two Decades, Study Finds [Video]

Over the course of the last several decades, people seeking to move out of populated areas have been increasingly building homes in neighboring wildlands.

Wildland-urban interface (WUI) — places where human development meets undeveloped natural areas like grasslands, deserts or forests — grew by 35.6 percent from 2000 to 2020, according to new research led by three environmental scientists from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The surge in WUI areas means more contact between people and wildlife, such as coyotes and bears, reported Phys.org. It has also resulted in an increasing number of homes being destroyed by smaller, local wildfires.

“Rapidly increasing human-nature interactions exacerbate the risk of exposure to wildfires for human society. The wildland-urban interface (WUI) represents the nexus of human-nature interactions, where the risk of exposure to natural hazards such as wildfire is most pronounced,” …