abstract
Article history:
Received 22 January 2010
Received in revised form 14 July 2010
Accepted 29 July 2010
Keywords:
Social vulnerability
Wildland fire
Environmental risk
Wildland fire mitigation
The southeastern U.S. is one of the more wildland fire prone areas of the country and also contains some of
the poorest or most socially vulnerable rural communities. Our project addresses wildland fire risk in this
part of the U.S and its intersection with social vulnerability. We examine spatial association between high
wildland fire prone areas which also rank high in social vulnerability (“hot spots”) for Alabama, Arkansas,
Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. We also look at the proximity of hot spots to wildland fire
mitigation programs. We hypothesize that hot spots are less likely than high wildland fire risk/low social
vulnerability communities to engage with mitigation programs (e.g., Community Wildfire Protection Plans or
Firewise Communities). To assess our hypothesis, we examined mean distances between: 1) hot spots and
mitigation programs and 2) high wildland fire risk/low social vulnerability communities and mitigation
programs. Overall, results show longer mean distances from hot spots to mitigation programs, compared to
distances for high wildland fire risk/low social vulnerability communities. This finding provides support for
our hypothesis and suggests that poorer communities in the southeast with high wildland fire risk may be at
a greater disadvantage than more affluent, high fire risk communities in these states.