Sustainable Defensible Space: Eco-appropriate homescapping for wildfire resilience
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The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (SMMNRA) in Southern California is a biodiverse, fire-adapted landscape that experiences unnaturally high fire frequencies that threaten the resiliency of the ecosystem and the safety of local communities.
The Southern California region, including SMMNRA, is one of the most fire-prone environments in the world and has more homes and area burned per decade than any other region of the US.
To increase wildfire resilience and maintain habitat quality in the Southern California Wildland Urban interface (WUI) it is necessary to:
• Reduce human ignitions and the frequency of large fires
• Manage the WUI to maintain or re-establish native vegetation
Our project focuses on the second objective – offering solutions to improve resilience and resource conservation values, and resistance of structures to wildfire loss for developed properties in the SMMNRA by improving management by homeowners of their defensible space zone.
This platform introduces Sustainable Defensible Space (SDS) as the area around the home extending 100 feet from the home itself. The condition of this space is critical not only to increasing resistance of structures to wildfire loss and safeguarding firefighters’ lives but also to improving conservation values and protecting California’s natural heritage. The landscaping choices in this area provide the greatest opportunity for improved habitat conservation with its associated ecosystem benefits such as increased carbon storage, biodiversity, slope stability and water conservation.
