Fire has historically played an important role in shaping the structure and composition of Sonoran semi-desert grassland vegetation. Yet, human use and land management activities have significantly altered arid grassland ecosystems over the last century, often producing novel fuel conditions. The variety of continuously updated satellite remote sensing systems provide opportunities for efficiently mapping combustible fine-fuels and fuel-types (e.g., grass, shrub, or tree cover) over large landscapes that are helpful for evaluating fire hazard and risk. For this study, we compared field ceptometer leaf area index (LAI) measurements to conventional means for estimating fine-fuel biomass on 20, 50 m × 20 m plots and 431, 0.5 m × 0.5 m quadrats on the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge (BANWR) in southern Arizona. LAI explained 65% of the variance in fine-fuel biomass using simple linear regression. An additional 19% of variance was explained from Random Forest regression tree models that included herbaceous plant height and cover as predictors. Field biomass and vegetation measurements were used to map fine-fuel and vegetation cover (fuel-type) from plots on BANWR comparing outcomes from multi-date (peak green and dormant period) Worldview-3 (WV3) and Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) imagery. Fine-fuel biomass predicted from WV3 imagery combined with terrain information from a digital elevation model explained greater variance using regression tree models (65%) as compared to OLI models (58%). Vegetation indices developed using red-edge bands as well as modeled bare ground and herbaceous cover were important to improve WV3 biomass estimates. Land cover classification for 11 cover categories with high spatial resolution WV3 imagery showed 80% overall accuracy and highlighted areas dominated by non-native grasses with 87% user’s class accuracy. Mixed native and non-native grass and shrublands showed 59% accuracy and less common areas dominated by native grasses on plots showed low class accuracy (23%). Digital data layers from WV3 models showed a significantly positive relationship (r² = 0.68, F = 119.2, p < 0.001) between non-native grass cover (e.g., Eragrostis lehmanniana) and average fine-fuel biomass within refuge fire management units. Overall, both WV3 and OLI produced similar fine-fuel biomass estimates although WV3 showed better model performance and helped characterized fine-scale changes in fuel-type and continuity across the study area.

Wildfires are projected to increase in severity and frequency due to climate change, and the electric grid is both a cause of wildfires and is vulnerable to wildfires. Equipment from the electric grid accounts for 10% of fires burned in California and 3% of fires nationally. Recent catastrophic wildfires, such as the Lahaina Fire, Camp Fire, Marshall Fire, and Smokehouse Creek fires, were all started by electrical equipment and show how devastating these events can be because they threaten lives and structures. Vegetation structure, weather and winds, climate and vegetation response, land use, and human activities all impact the likelihood of severe wildfires. We explore the relationship between the built environment, electric grid infrastructure specifically, and its role in causing catastrophic wildfires to find lessons learned for increasing resilience. Electric grid utility companies currently employ multiple methods to mitigate fire, including (1) early detection, (2) grid hardening, (3) vegetation management, and (4) pre-emptive shutoffs. Utility companies need to consider the conditions for wildfire and the impact that each mitigation strategy has on drivers of wildfire behavior, as a single solution will not be adequate. Utility companies need to work with stakeholders to develop a holistic strategy to reduce ignition likelihood and spread likelihood to reduce catastrophic wildfires and improve resiliency.

Water resources are greatly impacted by natural disasters, but very little is known about how these issues are portrayed in the media across different types of disasters. Using a corpus of over 600 thousand local newspaper articles, this research evaluates whether the amount of coverage of water-related concerns of fires and hurricanes reflects news values associated with magnitude and proximity. A more detailed analysis focused on wildfires, which occur on undeveloped land and have the potential to spread rapidly, was also conducted to further evaluate spatial patterns in disaster-related water coverage. Our results indicate that the newspaper coverage patterns for water issues are not equally connected to magnitude and proximity values for fires and hurricanes. In our sample, coverage of water issues in relation to fires and wildfires consistently had an inverse relationship with overall event magnitudes, whereas the coverage of water issues in relation to hurricanes demonstrated a positive correlation. Although wildfires are more likely to be clustered in the western part of the country, there was a lack of positive correlations with wildfire magnitudes in this region. Possible influences for these patterns (e.g., limited impacts to humans and lack of shock-value) are discussed. Given the media’s role in facilitating disaster management and recovery, these nuances in coverage variations provide insight into opportunities for informing water security, which is especially important given the increasing frequency of natural disasters.