Houses and WUI
Why and where do fires start (in the Huron National Forest)?

Can we stop fires before they start? Researchers are working to predict fire ignitions.
Weaving the conservation landscape: habitat connectivity and the future of the National Wildlife Refuge System

Could land use change threaten the US National Wildlife Refuge System? PhD student Chris Hamilton uses cutting-edge technologies to find an answer.

Simulating future land use across the United States

Dave Helmers and collaborators are using Open Source software tools in an NSF funded study predicting future land use change across the U.S.

Housing growth and road density in and near Park Service holdings in the Midwest

Worldwide, intensifying land use is limiting management options inside and out of national parks. Shelley Schmidt and others developed a land use monitoring approach and applied it to two parks in the Midwest to assess development pressures. They found considerable changes in road and housing density and landscape fragmentation.

Zoning has heterogeneous effects on housing growth, but in most cases is not strong enough to affect ecosystem functions

Is zoning an appropriate tool to protect lakes? Van Butsic answered this question for a study region in Northern Wisconsin. He found out that zoning is only effective on lakes with a certain baseline development. One size fits all zoning is ineffective.
Optimizing fuel treatment locations in the WUI

How can we optimize resources to protect houses from fire in America’s Wildland Urban Interface? A team of SILVIS researchers, lead by Avi Bar Massada, is exploring this question.
The Legacy of Past Housing Patterns is Important to Explain Today’s Plant Invasions

How important is the past to understand present plant invasions? Gregorio Gavier Pizarro recently found that plant invasions may depend more on historic housing and road patterns than on today’s urban sprawl. To the contrary, contemporary forest fragmentation explained invasions better than fragmentation legacies.