EWP Working Papers

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/13127

Founded in 1994, the Ecosystem Workforce Program was created to help lead the rural Pacific Northwest into the age of ecosystem management--management for healthy communities and healthy environments. The EWP believes that, by creating high skill forest and watershed jobs that enable people to work near their homes, we will establish a structure for long term resource stewardship. Our goal is to demonstrate the linkages between a quality workforce, a healthy economy, healthy community, and effective management for forest ecosystems.

For more information, visit the web site at: http://ewp.uoregon.edu/

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Now showing 1 - 13 of 13

Open Access
Assessing policy impacts on natural resource businesses : a review of research methods
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2016) Fenster, Emily; Abrams, Jesse; Moseley, Cassandra; Becker, Dennis R.
The purpose of this working paper is to review research methods used to assess the influence of public policies on natural resource business decision-making. We describe a suite of research methods that have been used to assess policy impacts on businesses, highlighting their analytical advantages and disadvantages. We emphasize natural resource policies and businesses in our review, but also present literature from other fields as relevant. With this review we attempt to contribute to a greater ability to conduct evaluation for policies and programs targeting natural resource firms.
Open Access
Assessment of early implementation of the US Forest Service's shared stewardship strategy
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2021) Kooistra, Chad; Schultz, Courtney A.; Huber-Stearns, Heidi; Abrams, Jesse; Greiner, Michelle; Sinkular, Emily
In 2018, in response to calls from Congress to accelerate cross-boundary fire hazard reduction and improve forest resilience, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) published the Shared Stewardship Strategy (USFS 2018). The document emphasizes partnership with the states, Tribes, and collaborative partners in order to identify priority areas for management, coordinate work across jurisdictions, and leverage diverse capacities. 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 across these states, including key actors’ perspectives on the Strategy and early planning and development efforts, primary opportunities and challenges, and the types of capacities, mechanisms, and direction needed to move ahead successfully with partnerships and Shared Stewardship implementation.
Open Access
Community diversity and wildfire risk : an archetype approach to understanding local capacity to plan for, respond to, and recover from wildfires
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2014) Carroll, Matthew S. (Matthew Stephen); Paveglio, Travis; Ellison, Autumn; Abrams, Jesse; Moseley, Cassandra
The wildfire dilemma in the United States (and particularly in the U.S. West) has been well documented and its broad parameters are well understood. A very small fraction of wildfire igniting in wildland settings each year turn into major conflagrations that burn homes and infrastructure, pose significant threat to human life, and upend the budgets of federal land management agencies. Although the mandates of federal land management agencies also dictate a focus on protecting public land and associated natural resources such as habitat, the reality is that much of the effort and expense at federal, state, and local levels is directed toward protecting human infrastructure and other societal “values at risk.”
Open Access
Community experiences with wildfire : actions, effectiveness, impacts, and trends : results from two surveys in counties and communities affected by wildfire
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2015) Ellison, Autumn; Knapp, Melanie; Abrams, Jesse; Nielsen-Pincus, Max; Paveglio, Travis; Moseley, Cassandra
Wildfire has become a growing threat for communities across the American West and a complex concern for agencies tasked with community protection. This task has grown more difficult due to the increasing incidence of large fires and the continued expansion of the wildland-urban interface (WUI), the area where human habitations and wildland fuels abut or intermix. These trends have motivated both federal policies and community-level responses to protect communities, lives, and infrastructure.
Open Access
Community-based organizations in the U.S. West : status, structure, and activities
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2016) Abrams, Jesse; Davis, Emily Jane; Ellison, Autumn; Moseley, Cassandra; Nowell, Branda
Many rural communities across the U.S. West were profoundly affected by economic and policy changes in the 1990s and early 2000s. Sudden shifts in federal land policies, restructuring of forestry and agriculture industries, and demographic changes led to social conflict and the decline of economic activities that had provided jobs and community identities for decades. In the wake of these changes, rural community members experimented with a variety of grassroots approaches to healing social divisions, creating new economic opportunities, and reinventing their relationships to nearby lands and waters. The best-known outcome of these grassroots experiments is the widespread adoption of collaborative decision-making processes for the governance of public lands. Through such processes, historically conflictive interests build trust and relationships while pursuing land management projects that meet social, ecological, and economic objectives. Collaboration is now considered an indispensable component of decision-making on public lands and is used in other contexts including mixed-ownership landscapes and in decision-making regarding watershed protection and restoration.
Open Access
Early implementation of the US Forest Service's shared stewardship strategy in the Eastern United States
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2021) Kee, Destin D.; Aldworth, Tyler; Abrams, Jesse; Kooistra, Chad; Schultz, Courtney A.; Huber-Stearns, Heidi
In 2018, in response to Congress’ calls for a renewed approach to forest management, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) announced the Shared Stewardship Strategy - an initiative aimed at increasing the pace and scale of cross-boundary forest management activities (USFS, 2018). In 2019, our team started conducting independent research through semi-structured interviews on the implementation and development of Shared Stewardship efforts in the western U.S. (Phase 1, detailed in Kooistra et al., 2021b). In late 2020, we began investigating states east of the Rocky Mountains (Phase 2), which we refer to herein for ease as “eastern” or “Phase 2” states, although our study included states as far west as Nebraska. This Executive Summary provides an overview of our key findings across Phase 2 states (also see Table A) and our observations on the future of Shared Stewardship.
Open Access
Economic development and public lands : the roles of community-based organizations
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2016) Davis, Emily Jane; Abrams, Jesse; Moseley, Cassandra; Ellison, Autumn; Nowell, Branda
The purpose of this paper is to examine the business assistance and economic development activities that community-based organizations (CBOs) undertake in rural public lands contexts in the U.S. West. We conducted three in-depth case studies of CBOs in Washington, Oregon, and California and a survey of 63 CBOs across the West.
Open Access
Fire science needs in the Pacific Northwest
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2011) Abrams, Jesse; Creighton, Janean H.; Moseley, Cassandra; Olsen, Christine S.; Davis, Emily Jane; Pomeroy, Alaina; Hamman, Sarah; Bruce, Josh; Perleberg, Andrew B.; DeMeo, Thomas; Evers, Louisa; Fitzgerald, Stephen Arthur
After a century of wildfire suppression, the costs and complexity of wildfire management are increasing. Population growth in fire-prone landscapes, climate change, and diverse land management objectives all contribute to a complex management environment. The number and types of managers and practitioners involved in wildfire management has also grown. Government agencies, land managers, air quality regulators, nonprofit organizations, community leaders, and others have a diversity of fire science and social science needs. To protect and restore fire-adapted communities and natural resources in the Pacific Northwest, a process for effective dissemination and accelerated user adoption of pertinent information, knowledge, tools, and expertise is necessary. An improved system to connect, engage, and exchange information between researchers and diverse groups affected by wild or prescribed fire could enhance exchange of existing fire science and technologies throughout the region, and encourage fire and land management stakeholders to evaluate and adopt relevant fire science.
Open Access
Land manager experiences with resilience in national forest planning and management
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2020) Coughlan, Michael R.; Ellison, Autumn; Abrams, Jesse; Huber-Stearns, Heidi
Through a Joint Fire Science-funded research project, we investigated the concept of resilience as a means of constructively living with disturbances such as fire and insect outbreaks on national forest lands, including what resilience means, what it takes to plan for resilient outcomes, and the factors that complicate and encourage these outcomes. Previous reports from this research document how agency policy mandates, approaches, and resources encourage the use of resilience in planning and compare three recently completed national forest plan revisions in terms of how they incorporated resilience concepts. This report focuses on how resilience is incorporated in project planning on national forests and how well it aligns with planning processes and frameworks on a broader scale. We draw upon data from a national survey of Forest Service planners conducted in 2020.
Open Access
Planning and managing for resilience : lessons from national forest plan revisions
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2020) Abrams, Jesse; Greiner, Michelle; Timberlake, Thomas; Schultz, Courtney A.; Evans, Alexander M.; Huber-Stearns, Heidi
The forest plan revision process presents an opportunity for managers to reorient a national forest’s management direction in pursuit of resilient landscapes, among other goals. It also represents an opportunity for public engagement and the identification of new roles and responsibilities for governmental and non-governmental entities. Through a Joint Fire Science Program-funded project, we compared three recently completed national forest plan revision processes to determine whether and how planners were able to plan for resilient landscape outcomes. Our work helps illustrate the ways that front-line forest planners attempt to promote landscape resilience while reconciling potentially conflicting pressures and management directions. The lessons from our comparative analysis are relevant for forest managers and key stakeholders attempting to plan in pursuit of more resilient landscapes.
Open Access
Rangeland fire protection associations : an alternative model for wildfire response
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2017) Davis, Emily Jane; Abrams, Jesse; Wollstein, Katherine; Meacham, James E.
Wildfires are increasingly common and growing in size across rangelands in the U.S. West. Although fire is a natural component of sagebrush steppe ecosystems, it can also threaten values such as sage-grouse habitat, forage for grazing, and residential and commercial structures; it can also encourage invasive plant establishment. Wildfire suppression responsibilities have historically been divided by ownership among resident ranchers, some rural fire districts, and government agencies. But wildfire, and interest in managing it, crosses ownership boundaries. Since the 1990s, numerous Rangeland Fire Protection Associations (RFPAs) have emerged in Oregon and Idaho to improve fire management by organizing and authorizing rancher participation in fire suppression alongside federal agency firefighters (typically, the Bureau of Land Management hereafter “BLM”). RFPAs are all-volunteer crews of ranchers with training and legal authority to respond to fires on private and state lands in remote landscapes where there had been no existing state or local fire protection, and can become authorized to respond on federal lands as well. There has been growing policy interest in the RFPA model, yet limited research on how RFPAs function, their capacities, and potential implications for encouraging fire-adapted communities. Our study analyzed the establishment, functioning, successes, and challenges of the RFPA model through four case studies of individual RFPAs and their respective state programs in Oregon and Idaho during 2015–16.
Open Access
Regional approaches to addressing the mountain pine beetle outbreak on US Forest Service lands
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2019) Davis, Emily Jane; Abrams, Jesse; Huber-Stearns, Heidi; Steen-Adams, Michelle M.; Moseley, Cassandra
Elevated outbreaks of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) have occurred across the western U.S. over the past two decades. Although mountain pine beetle (MPB) is a native insect that naturally infests various pine species, recent outbreaks have had significant impacts due to their intensity and extent. On national forestlands in several states, widespread tree mortality has affected forest health, tourism and recreation, the timber industry, public safety, and other values. MPB infestations also cross ownership boundaries, making them a complex management challenge for land managers. In responding to MPB impacts, the US Forest Service (USFS) must therefore consider effects and strategies across landscapes beyond national forests, as well as the social and political factors that may constrain or enable management options. There is an ongoing need to better understand how agency land managers and partners engage with MPB outbreaks as well as other acute forest health disturbances that can affect multiple values on public lands. Through a National Science Foundation- funded research project, we investigated MPB response through case studies on national forestlands in five states. Our primary goal was to examine socio-political strategies for addressing MPB impacts, including any formal or informal changes to forest governance and management practices that were implemented in these cases, and to identify variables that supported or inhibited effective responses. We provide an overview of each case study, then compare and discuss the strategies used.
Open Access
Resilience in land management planning : policy mandates, approaches, and resources
(Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of Oregon, 2017) Timberlake, Thomas; Schultz, Courtney A.; Abrams, Jesse
Climate change adaptation presents a challenge for federal land management agencies in the United States. Increasingly, these agencies are turning to the concept of resilience to guide planning for an uncertain future. Resilience refers to the ability of a system to withstand disturbances and maintain its general structure and function. However, the concept can be challenging to operationalize, and a range of types of resilience and definitions for the concept exist. Nonetheless, the concept of resilience can aid in planning by emphasizing uncertainty, nonlinearity, adaptability, and consideration of cross-scale linkages. It also requires accepting the inevitability of ecological disturbances, including wildland fires. This working paper aims to provide background and context to support individuals and groups working to implement resilience in various land management planning contexts and we summarize various frameworks for planning for resilience.

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Browsing EWP Working Papers by Author "Abrams, Jesse"

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