USGS Ecosystems Science in Support of Public Safety & Security

Coastal communities of the U.S. are home to 129 million people, or almost 40 percent of the nation's total population, and contribute \$10 trillion in goods and services annually. Hurricanes and intensifying storms are increasing coastal flooding, which inundates low-lying buildings, roads, and other infrastructure, destroying property and in some cases leading to loss of lives. Coastal wetlands provide key habitat to support commercial and recreational fisheries, and absorb floods and wave energy, which can decrease property damage by up to 20%, providing \$23 billion annually in coastal protection services around the U.S.  

Identifying Adaptation Strategies for Stormwater Management 

In the Northeast, current stormwater management infrastructure and strategies are built around historical weather data and not the recent weather trends including more frequent extreme rainfall. This matters because stormwater can introduce pollution into streams and cause flooding. In partnership with city stormwater managers, USGS scientists are combining climate data, stormwater models, and data about urban streams to identify effective adaptation strategies for stormwater management in the region that will also support healthy lakes and streams. 

Wildland Fire 

Hotter and drier conditions are making wildfires more intense and destructive across the U.S. In 2024 wildfires burned approximately 8.9 million acres across the U.S.  With damages to critical energy and communication infrastructure, private property, and ecosystem services combined with the costs of construction, emergency evacuation, and post-fire rehabilitation, has elevated wildfire costs to $424 billion annually and increased risks to human health and safety. This is reflected in the increased resources needed to contain these fires; for example, 57% of the U.S. Forest Service budget was devoted to managing wildfires in FY2024, compared to only 16% in 1995.  Estimated and realized costs for a single wildfire and post-fire flooding range from $694 million (estimated post-fire flooding costs on Bill Williams River in AZ) to $2.5 Billion (actual post-fire costs in Las Vegas, NM) to $35 - $45 billion in the recent Palisades Fire, CA. This is in addition to the actual fire suppression costs, which run in the millions. The USGS provides timely information to fire and land managers to make decisions before, during and after wildfires and are widely used by private, state, and federal land managers across the nation. 

Fire Science Supporting Department of the Interior (DOI) Lands 

In the past two decades, wildfires burned more area of non-forest lands than forest lands; 74% of DOI burned area occurred on non-forest lands. USGS has become the wildlife fire research arm for DOI, its science used by five DOI Bureaus at the National Interagency Fire Center, each having a wide range of fire management priorities, supporting a $5.5. billion wildland fire workforce.  

• The USGS - National Interagency Fire Center partnership helps prevent natural resource loss, infrastructure damage, property damage, and even human lives. By using science to direct fuel treatments and suppression efforts where they will provide the greatest benefit and be the most effective, taxpayer dollars are maximized for wildfire suppression, fuels management, and rehabilitation.  

• USGS fire science directly addresses a wide variety of fire risk and management needs across DOI lands, and provides critical information on forest, shrubland, grassland, and desert landscapes, as well as the health of watersheds and other natural resources. USGS economists are also examining the benefits and tradeoffs for managers selecting locations for landscape-level fuel treatments, approaches to estimate the value of damages to ecosystem services from large fires, how the spending on post-fire treatments in the Western U.S. supports local jobs and businesses, and measuring the costs of managing invasive annual grass that increase fire risk. 

• Invasive plants can dramatically change fire regimes by replacing native vegetation and changing the fuel characteristics of the vegetation. After fire, these landscapes are even more vulnerable to more invasive grasses, which leads to an undesired grass-fire feedback cycle that lead to more wildfires. The DOI has spent over $247M on fuels management in the last two fiscal years. USGS science informs strategies and approaches for fuels management and herbicide application for invasive grasses that reduces the burn probability that may reduce costs for fire suppression, which costs almost $5 billion annually. 

Understanding Extreme Fire Spread 

USGS scientists are working to understand what conditions promote or inhibit extreme fire spread, using this information to create maps and models to help design prescribed fire treatments that can reduce the risk of fire spread.  The American public, private industries, federal, state, and local governments heavily rely on USGS fire scientific information including satellite imagery mapping, geospatial datasets, online spatial assessments, and assessment/mapping tools in wildland fire decision-making processes. Examples are the post-fire burn severity mapping, geospatial risk assessment clearinghouse, wildland urban interface mapping and wildland fire trends tool. This data is fully transparent and free to the American public.   

Informing Communities Within the Wildland-Urban Interface 

The USGS also provides information to communities within the wildland-urban interface to help the public understand what makes homes and communities vulnerable and what they can do to reduce the risk of wildfire around home and properties. USGS economists investigate numerous aspects of wildland fire, its impacts, and how to mitigate the risk wildfire poses to resources, property, and the incalculable cost of human lives. For example, in Santa Fe, New Mexico USGS science informed local management plans and actions related to wildfire hazard, fuels reduction, and post-fire flooding including: the Santa Fe National Forest and Fire and Forest Management Plans and City of Santa Fe Hazard Planning. As a result, the local managers were successful at stopping the 2020 En Medio fire from burning into Santa Fe, protecting public safety, and causing only minimal post-fire flooding which saved the community millions in avoided losses of property. 

Mitigating Loss of Life and Property

USGS partners with Colorado Department of Transportation and Colorado Avalanche Information Center to inform planning and disaster mitigation into the future. Critical transportation corridors run through the state of Colorado, including transcontinental Interstate 70 and many other highways that are at risk from snow avalanche hazards each winter. According to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, the value of freight shipments to and from businesses in Colorado was $232 billion in 2022 of which 77% was shipped by truck. Thus, road closures and damages by avalanches are extremely costly (millions can be lost for each day of closure), making accurate forecasting and mitigation activities essential for keeping the road open, avoiding both losses of life and property. Long term USGS avalanche frequency data has helped the Colorado Department of Transportation, BNSF Railway, National Park Service, and Colorado Avalanche Information Center. USGS provided a 200-year avalanche chronology of destructive, large magnitude avalanches that helped them reassess their forecasts to improve public safety, saving lives and property. 

Looking at the Past to Forecast the Future 

In Alaska, the City and Borough of Juneau has the highest urban avalanche danger in the nation. USGS scientists are identifying how climate and weather affected past avalanches in the region, to better forecast future avalanche risk and support long-term infrastructure planning and avalanche mitigation operations. The team is focusing their efforts on four sites of critical infrastructure: the Kensington Mine, the Snettisham Fjord (home to Juneau’s main hydroelectric power plant), Eaglecrest Ski Area, and the neighborhood of Behrends Avenue. USGS is working closely with avalanche forecasters at Alaska Energy Light & Power, Kensington Mine, Alaska Railroad Corp., state agencies, and local municipalities to incorporate their local knowledge and identify areas where future avalanche changes would most impact public safety and critical infrastructure.