Energy Infrastructure as Built Environment in Rural Rangelands of the US Interior West

Abstract

Wildfire is occurring more frequently in areas identified as wildland-urban interface (WUI), where natural vegetation meets or mixes with the human built environment. Although understanding of the spatial extent of WUI has been expanded to include rural areas and rangeland ecosystems, products that identify WUI based on the location of homes and other buildings appear to miss components of the built environment that dominate these unconventional locations, specifically, energy production structures (e.g., petroleum wells, wind turbines, solar arrays, and geothermal plants). This study describes the spatial distribution and density of energy production areas in the US Interior West, summarizes the land cover and current WUI designations within energy production areas, and describes historical wildfire activity within energy production areas by state. An analysis of a combination of publicly available geospatial data identified a 2 022  201 km² energy production footprint comprised of 1 220 347 individual energy production structures. Only 6% of the footprint is currently designated as WUI, and 67% of the footprint is comprised of rangeland. Four out of the five states with the largest energy production footprint have also experienced the greatest historical wildfire activity within the energy production areas, suggesting these structures are at risk of fast-spreading wildfire through rangeland fuels. Despite the fire risk to energy production assets and the challenges energy infrastructure might pose to emergency managers, there is a paucity of research or resources addressing these changes within rural landscapes.