Laurel Andrews | 2025 I.S. Symposium

Name: Laurel Andrews
Title: Burning Questions: An Interactive Visualized Data Exploration into Increasing Wildfire Trends in the United States and Associated Societal and Environmental Effects
Major: Statistical & Data Sciences
Minors: Earth Sciences; Spanish
Advisor: Colby Long

In the past half century, wildfires in the United States have increased drastically in size, frequency, and severity. Most wildfires in the US are caused by humans in some form with the rest caused by lightning strikes. This increase is mostly due to historical wildfire suppression leading to a buildup of fuel, housing developments encroaching on wildland, and climate change exacerbating fire weather. Environmental wildfire impacts include tree cover loss and ecosystem destruction, wildlife health impacts from smoke, and significant soil and water quality issues such as erosion and waterway contamination. Societal wildfire impacts include infrastructure loss, negative human health impacts, and total direct and indirect economic costs. This research uses interactive data analysis in Shiny for Rstudio to examine increasing wildfires in the United States using seven total datasets mostly from the US government. The five interactive applications created allow users to analyze characteristics of individual fires across the US, wildfire risk to homes, demographics of risky areas, tree cover loss over time, and the seasonality of smoke. These applications, along with the accompanying background information, provide users with a detailed, data-driven account of the causes and effects of increasing wildfires in the United States.

Posted in Symposium 2025 on May 1, 2025.