Long-Term Changes of the Wildland–Urban Interface in the Polish Carpathians

Marcin Szwagrzyk,Dominik Kaim,Volker Radeloff,Krzysztof Ostafin,Monika Dobosz

doi:10.3390/ijgi7040137

Abstract

The Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) is the area where houses and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle, which causes many environmental problems. The current WUI is widespread in many regions, but it is unclear how the WUI evolved, especially in regions where both houses and forest cover have increased. Here we compared WUI change in the Polish Carpathians for 1860 and 2013 in two study areas with different land use history. Our western study area experienced gradual forest increase and housing growth over time, while the eastern study area was subject to a shock due to post-war resettlements, which triggered rapid reforestation. We found that in both study areas WUI extent increased from 1860 to 2013 (41.3 to 54.6%, and 12.2 to 33.3%, in the west and east, respectively). However the causes of WUI growth were very different. In the western study area new houses were the main cause for new WUI, while in the eastern study area forest cover increase was more important. Our results highlight that regions with similar current WUI cover have evolved very differently, and that the WUI has grown rapidly and is widespread in the Polish Carpathians.

Highlights

The Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) is the area, where human settlements and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle [1,2,3]
Our results show that WUI areas in the Polish Carpathians increased rapidly over the last 150 years
While in the western study area, settlement development was more important for WUI creation over time, it was quite opposite in the eastern study area

Summary

Introduction

The Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) is the area, where human settlements and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle [1,2,3]. Studying the WUI is especially important in the context of wildfires, because human-induced fire ignitions are concentrated in the WUI, and because wildland vegetation in close proximity to houses provides fuels that allows wildfires to spread, thereby threatening inhabited areas [1,2,4,5]. There are, many more ecological processes and interactions that are concentrated in the WUI, including exotic species introductions, disease transfers [9,10], and conflicts between predators and humans [11]. In turn, bring about noise, pollution and non-native species invasions [13], similar to houses in the WUI. Rural housing density in Wisconsin, US, explains the abundance of non-native invasive plants in surrounding forests [15], and a similar pattern has occurred in New Zealand [16]. While the WUI was initially defined in a wildfire context, it has much wider ramifications, and that is why there is a need to detect and monitor WUI areas and understand how these change over time

Results

Discussion

Conclusion