Wildlands Urban Interface (WUI) Research for Resilience: Addressing California’s Climate, Conservation & Housing Crises

The Wildland Urban Interface [WUI] — the zone of transition between unoccupied land and human development— is the fastest growing area of housing development in California. In combination with climate change, it is also the leading cause of catastrophic wildfires, which have been increasing dramatically in recent decades in scale and impact. Yet there is no systematic research on what is driving WUI growth. Many assume it is the result of people’s perennial desire to “live close to nature,” particularly in the post-COVID era. In this project, we hypothesize something else. While people move to and live in the WUI for a host of reasons and desires, we suspect an increasingly powerful driver is California’s housing crisis, with its role in displacing residents from unaffordable cities into these more remote and less expensive areas. As a result, the WUI may become both increasingly hazardous and unequal, with feedbacks between these dynamics on a wider scale. 

To  investigate this, we are conducting the first comprehensive study of the drivers, demographics, and socio-environmental dynamics of WUI growth. Our study area is the California Central Coast, including Santa Cruz, San Benito, Santa Clara and Monterey Counties, a region renowned for its combination of bio-diverse coasts and wildlands, culturally significant indigenous lands, rich agricultural belt, ever-expanding commute-shed, as well as extreme lack of affordable housing and inequality along lines of race and class. This creates a powerful context in which to analyze the region’s rapidly growing WUI areas. To understand drivers of WUI growth we use survey and interview-based research with WUI residents. To trace changing demographics we use novel socio-spatial and statistical methods. And to explore changing cultural and socio-environmental dynamics we combine these methods with land use history, ethnography, fire ecology, ethno-botany, and urban and regional political economy.

Through this research we aim to reveal the relationality between urban and WUI areas, as well as the particular challenges facing our region as a result of rapid affordability-driven WUI growth. This includes the unequal capacity to mitigate the risk of fire and flood, increasing informality and vulnerability in post-disaster WUI areas, as well as obstacles for rural and indigenous land stewardship practices, like prescribed burning. Ultimately we aim to bring together communities concerned about these issues from different angles — including affordable housing and tenant advocates; indigenous, rural, and conservation land trusts; emergency responders and land managers — to envision a more sustainable and equitable future on a regional scale.

People

Hillary Angelo

• Title
  • Associate Professor
• Department
  • Sociology Department

Taylor Harris Braswell

• Title
  • Postdoctoral Scholar in Urban and Environmental Studies
• Department
  • Sociology Department

Jeffrey Bury

• Title
  • Department Chair and Professor
• Department
  • Environmental Studies Department

Chris Benner

• Title
  • Professor
• Department
  • Environmental Studies Department

Emily Gelina Chambers

Lucy Ferneyhough

• Title
  • Native Plant Program Project Manager
• Department
  • Arboretum

Rick Flores

• Title
  • Associate Director
• Department
  • Arboretum

Kyle Rod Galindez

• Title
  • Graduate Student
• Department
  • Sociology Department

Miriam Greenberg

• Title
  • Professor and Chair
• Department
  • Sociology Department

Alex Jones

• Title
  • UCSC Campus Natural Reserve Manager
• Department
  • Natural Reserve System

Elena Losada

Andrew S. Mathews

• Title
  • Professor
• Department
  • Anthropology Department

Barry Nickel

• Title
  • Director, Center For Integrated Spatial Research
• Department
  • Environmental Studies Department

Juan Manuel Pedroza

• Title
  • Assistant Professor
• Department
  • Sociology Department

Colleen K Stone

• Title
  • SJRC Manager
• Department
  • Science & Justice Research Center

Alma Esperanza Villa Loma

Christopher C Wilmers

• Title
  • Professor
• Department
  • Environmental Studies Department

Gregory Thomas Woolston

• Tatiana Brennan, County of Santa Cruz, Office of Response, Recovery, & Resilience (OR3) Senior Administrative Analyst
• Ray Cancino, Community Bridges, Chief Executive Officer
• Jared Childress, Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association (CCPBA) Program Manager.
• Christy Fischer, Trust for Public Land (TPL) Senior Project Manager
  Cesar Lara, Monterey Bay Central Labor Council (MBCLC) Executive Director
• Dustin Mulvaney, SJSU Environmental Studies Professor
• Devii Rao, UC Cooperative Extension Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor serving San Benito, Monterey, and Santa Cruz Counties; Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association (CCPBA)
• Dave Reid, Santa Cruz County Office of Response, Recovery, & Resilience (SCC OR3) Director
• Brenda Rubio, Trust for Public Land (TPL) Project Associate
• Barb Satink Wolfson, UC Cooperative Extension Fire Advisor for Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz counties
• Alexandra D. Syphard, Conservation Biology Institute, Senior Research Ecologist