Fire on the Fringe: A SESYNC graduate pursuit

The Fire on the Fringe project was a collaborative project and graduate student pursuit funded by the National Socio-Environment Synthesis Center (SESYNC) at the University of Maryland. The project was an effort by an interdisciplinary group of six doctoral students to investigate how the configuration of defensible space around individual homes might affect landscape scale fire dynamics near San Diego, CA.

Our research team worked on constructing a coupled agent-based model of shifting dynamics of the human-fire relationship within the San Diego-Cleveland National Forest wildland-urban interface (SDCNF WUI). The project investigated the relationship between homeowner firewise behavior, displacement of native vegetation. and the ability of fire management and urban planning mitigate risk to humans, property, and native vegetation.