Issue 7

Human Influence on Forest Ecosystems: The Southern Wildland-Urban Interface Assessment

In 1998, Florida wildfires demonstrated the complexities of natural resource management in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Shortly after these fires, the Chief of the Forest Service conducted a review of the South and identified the WUI as one of the main challenges for the Forest Service.

In response, the Southern Research Station and the Forest Service’s Southern Region, in cooperation with the Southern Group of State Foresters, conducted an assessment to identify and better understand factors driving social and ecological changes within the WUI, as well as the consequences of such changes. The resulting assessment, Human Influences on Forest Ecosystems: The Southern Wildland-Urban Interface Assessment, was completed in 2002. The purpose of the assessment was to provide the foundation for establishing an interdisciplinary program of research and technology transfer within the Forest Service.

Back to: Seeing the Houses through the Trees:The Wildland-Urban Interface in the South