Research Database
Displaying 61 - 80 of 143
Cultivating Collaborative Resilience to Social and Ecological Change: An Assessment of Adaptive Capacity, Actions, and Barriers Among Collaborative Forest Restoration Groups in the United States
Year: 2022
Collaboration is increasingly emphasized as a tool to realize national-level policy goals in public lands management. Yet, collaborative governance regimes (CGRs) are nested within traditional bureaucracies and are affected by internal and external disruptions. The extent to which CGRs adapt and remain resilient to these disruptions remains under-explored. Here, we distill insights from an assessment of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) projects and other CGRs. We asked (1) how do CGRs adapt to disruptions? and (2) what barriers constrained CGR resilience? Our…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Minimize the bad days: Wildland fire response and suppression success
Year: 2022
• Effective wildland fire response and suppression are critical for reducing the size of frequent and severe wildfires, thereby reducing the risk of post-fire conversion to invasive annual grass-dominated plant communities. • Wildland firefighter safety and strategic deployment of resources are paramount for timely initial attack to prevent incidents from escalating. • By mobilizing a timely and safe initial response, early detection technologies, strategic networks of fuel breaks, and Rangeland Fire Protection Associations help “minimize the bad days” on the fireline and improve suppression…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Human- and lightning-caused wildland fire ignition clusters in British Columbia, Canada
Year: 2022
Wildland fire is a common occurrence in western Canada, with record-setting area burned recorded in British Columbia (BC) in the past decade. Here, we used the unsupervised machine learning algorithm HDBSCAN to identify high-density clusters of both human- and lightning- caused wildfire ignitions in BC using data from 2006 to 2020. We found that human-caused ignition clusters tended to occur around population centres, First Nations communities, roads and valleys, and were more common in the southern half of the province, which is more populated. Lightning-ignition clusters were generally…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Expanding wildland-urban interface alters forest structure and landscape context in the northern United States
Year: 2022
The wildland-urban interface (WUI), where housing intermingles with wildland vegetation, is the fastest-growing land use type in the United States. Given the ecological and social benefits of forest ecosystems, there is a growing need to more fully understand how such development alters the landscape context and structure of these WUI forests. In a space-for-time analysis we utilized land cover data, forest inventory plots, and housing density data over time to examine differences in forest characteristics of the northern US across three WUI change classes: (a) forest that has been in WUI…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Effectiveness of fitness training and psychosocial education intervention programs in wildland firefighting: a cluster randomised control trial
Year: 2022
Critical to effective fire management is the protection and preparedness of highly trained wildland firefighters who routinely face extreme physical and psychological demands. To date, there is limited scientific evidence of psychosocial education intervention effectiveness in this context. The objective of the current study is to utilise a cluster randomised control trial study design to evaluate fitness training and psychosocial education intervention programs across a wildland fire season. Wildland firefighters (n = 230) were randomly assigned by their work location to one of four…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Re-Envisioning Wildland Fire Governance: Addressing the Transboundary, Uncertain, and Contested Aspects of Wildfire
Year: 2022
Wildfire is a complex problem because of the diverse mix of actors and landowners involved, uncertainty about outcomes and future conditions, and unavoidable trade-offs that require ongoing negotiation. In this perspective, we argue that addressing the complex challenge of wildfire requires governance approaches designed to fit the nature of the wildfire problem. For instance, while wildfire is often described as a cross-boundary problem, understanding wildfire risk as transboundary highlights important political and institutional challenges that complicate collaboration across jurisdictions…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The importance of Indigenous cultural burning in forested regions of the Pacific West, USA
Year: 2021
Indigenous communities in the Pacific West of North America have long depended on fire to steward their environments, and they are increasingly asserting the importance of cultural burning to achieve goals for ecological and social restoration. We synthesized literature regarding objectives and effects of cultural burning in this region within an ecosystem services framework. Much scholarly literature focuses on why various species harvested from burned areas were important historically, while tribes and recent research increasingly stress a wide range of ecological and cultural benefits…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Roles and experiences of non-governmental organisations in wildfire response and recovery
Year: 2021
Local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play critical roles in providing immediate relief resources and long-term recovery support for communities after a disaster. Drawing on interviews with NGO representatives involved in three Northern California wildfires in 2017 and 2018, this study identifies challenges and opportunities for NGOs supporting wildfire relief and recovery. Across fires and NGOs, NGO management and wellbeing, coordination and disaster experiences emerge as common barriers and enablers of relief and recovery. In many cases, local NGOs’ participation in wildfire relief…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Assessment of Early Implementation of the US Forest Service’s Shared Stewardship Strategy
Year: 2021
In 2019, Colorado State University entered into a challenge cost-share agreement with USFS State and Private Forestry to conduct independent research on the implementation and development of Shared Stewardship efforts. The first phase of our work took place in 2020, when we interviewed agency and state employees and representatives of partner organizations in states in the West that had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU)with the USFS to formally pursue Shared Stewardship. Our primary goal was to understand the main factors affecting the early stages of Shared Stewardship efforts…
Publication Type: Report
Network governance in the use of prescribed fire: roles for bridging organizations and other actors in the Western United States
Year: 2021
Dangerous wildfire conditions continue to threaten people and ecosystems across the globe and cooperation is critical to meeting the outsized need for increased prescribed burning in wildfire risk reduction work. Despite the benefits of using prescribed fire to mitigate wildfire risks, prescribed fire implementation is still challenging. Collaboration and capacity-building can help address policy and capacity barriers inhibiting prescribed fire. We conducted 53 interviews across four case studies in the western United States where federal land management agencies and cooperative actors are…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Recovering & rebuilding from Oregon's 2020 wildfires
Year: 2021
The recovery requires an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to meet people where they are, assess their needs, and work collaboratively for the best solutions in each community. In addition, it will be critical to listen to individuals in communities to gain a deep understanding of barriers and needs.
Publication Type: Government Report
The "strings attached" to community difference and potential pathways to fire adaptiveness in the wildland urban interface
Year: 2021
This article identifies specific social characteristics in two wildland urban interface communities that may have significant impacts on the ability of those communities to adapt to wildfire. Researchers used a mixed-methods approach to triangulate results to identify potential views and motives surrounding three important behaviors and values related to crafting potential strategies to mitigate wildfire risk. The analysis of quantitative data in the form of responses to Likert-type questions and qualitative data in the form of responses to questions asked during focus group sessions yielded…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Keepers of the Flame: Supporting the Revitalization of Indigenous Cultural Burning
Year: 2021
The revitalization of cultural burning is a priority for many Native American tribes and for agencies and organizations that recognize the cultural and ecological importance of this practice. Traditional fire practitioners are working to resist the impact of settler colonialism and reestablish cultural burning to promote traditional foods and materials, exercise their sovereignty in land management, and strengthen their communities’ cultural, physical and emotional wellbeing. Despite broad support for cultural burning, the needs of practitioners are often poorly understood by non-Native…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Contrasting the role of human- and lightning-caused wildfires on future fire regimes on a Central Oregon landscape
Year: 2021
Climate change is expected to increase fire activity in many regions of the globe, but the relative role of human vs. lightning-caused ignitions on future fire regimes is unclear. We developed statistical models that account for the spatiotemporal ignition patterns by cause in the eastern slopes of the Cascades in Oregon, USA. Projected changes in energy release component from a suite of climate models were used with our model to quantify changes in frequency and extent of human and lightning-caused fires and record-breaking events based on sizes of individual fires between contemporary (2006…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Pre-season fire management planning: the use of Potential Operational Delineations to prepare for wildland fire events
Year: 2020
US fire scientists are developing Potential Wildfire Operational Delineations, also known as ‘PODs’, as a pre-fire season planning tool to promote safe and effective wildland fire response, strengthen risk management approaches in fire management and better align fire management objectives. PODs are a collaborative planning approach based on spatial analytics to identify potential wildfire control lines and assess the desirability of fire before ignition. They offer the opportunity to apply risk management principles with partners before the compressed timeframe of incident response. We…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Joint Fire Science Program 2019 Progress Report
Year: 2020
Congress created the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) in 1998 as a partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to identify and fund the research needs of the fire management community. Since that time, the JFSP has provided leadership to the fire community by identifying high-priority wildland fire science research needs that will enhance the decision making ability of fire and fuels managers, natural resource managers, and others to meet their management objectives. This progress report highlights a small sample of those research…
Publication Type: Report
Tribes & Climate Change
Year: 2020
Native Americans rely on tribally important ecosystem services such as traditional foods, hunting, timber production, non-timber forest resources (recreation, water), and cultural resources. Unfortunately, many of these resources may be highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. A research team sought to answer the question: Where and which tribally-important ecosystem services will be affected by climate change in the Pacific Northwest? They used projections from climate and vegetation models and stakeholder input to demonstrate a generalizable approach for assessing possible…
Publication Type: Web project page
Potential COVID-19 Outbreak in Fire Camp: Modeling Scenarios and Interventions
Year: 2020
The global COVID-19 pandemic will pose unique challenges to the management of wildlandfire in 2020. Fire camps may provide an ideal setting for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virusthat causes COVID-19. However, intervention strategies can help minimize disease spread andreduce the risk to the firefighting community. We developed a COVID-19 epidemic model tohighlight the risks posed by the disease during wildland fire incidents. Our model accounts forthe transient nature of the population on a wildland fire incident, which poses unique risks to themanagement of communicable diseases in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fostering collective action to reduce wildfire risk across property boundaries in the American West
Year: 2020
Large-scale, high-severity wildfires are a major challenge to the future social-ecological sustainability of fire-adapted forest ecosystems in the American West. Managing forests to mitigate this risk is a collective action problem requiring landowners and stakeholders within multi-ownership landscapes to plan and implement coordinated restoration treatments. Our research question is: how can we promote collective action to reduce wildfire risk and restore fire-resilient forests in the American West? To address this question we draw on collective action theory to produce an environmental…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Walking through a "phoenix landscape": hiker surveys reveal nuanced perceptions of wildfire effects
Year: 2020
Public opinion of wildfire is often perceived to be negative and in support of fire suppression, even though research suggests public opinions have become more positive over the past few decades. However, most prior work on this topic has focused on homeowners in forested regions. In this study, we shift the lens to hikers in a chaparral- and oak-savannah-dominated landscape that burned at high severity in 2015. We surveyed hikers before and after their hike about their familiarity and perceptions of local fire, and wildfire in the nation at large. We found hikers were familiar with topics…
Publication Type: Journal Article