Tracking Human Development in the Wildland-Urban Interface: A Digitizing Workflow for Open Source Education

The Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) is the area of human development that is abutting or in close proximity to wildland vegetation. Development across the urban-rural continuum has seen the WUI become the fastest growing land cover type in the United States, posing significant risks to both wildland ecosystems and housing developments as wildfire regimes increase in frequency and intensity. Evaluating wildfire risk within the WUI and identifying proper land use strategies to mitigate future risk requires human development to be tracked over time. However, proprietary geographic information systems (GIS) applications that are used to achieve these tasks are often cost-prohibitive and lack functionality across varying platforms, narrowing user base and undermining educational availability. Here we use QGIS – an open-source, cross-platform application – to develop a workflow and corresponding educational module for digitizing human development and assessing geospatial data across the WUI. By leveraging open-source software, this workflow and educational module have broad-reaching utility for additional GIS applications across scientific disciplines, ultimately contributing to inclusive education in geospatial analysis.