Issue 7

Blazing Landscapes

A home in the country, near the city. Americans in record numbers are coming home to forest and mountain retreats to barbecue on their decks, putter in their gardens, and relax in natural surroundings.

Many newcomers to rural southern retreats have forgotten—or may have never known—that wildfires are as much a part of their new neighborhood landscapes as nature’s symphony at sunset. Idyllic hideaways perched atop a mountain or nestled in a pine forest may one day be in the path of a destructive wildfire caused by lightning or carelessness.

“The entire South is becoming one big wildland-urban interface. Increasingly, people are building homes and recreating in the interface with no regard for the risks,” says John Stanturf, project leader at the SRS Center for Forest Disturbance Science based in Athens, GA. Stanturf oversees a team of foresters, ecologists, meteorologists, soil scientists, chemists, and computer modelers who study the ecology, management, and restoration of southern forest ecosystems. He estimates that wildland-urban interfaces, or “exurban” areas, encompass three to five times more land than urban areas. (...continued...)