Environmental Studies (ENVS) Data

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Browsing Environmental Studies (ENVS) Data by Subject "wildfire governance"

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    ItemOpen Access
    Code Descriptions for “Managed wildfire: A strategy limited by terminology, risk perception, and ownership boundaries.”
    (University of Oregon, 2021) Davis, Emily Jane; Huber-Stearns, Heidi R.; Cheng, Antony S.; Deak, Alison; Evans, Alexander; Caggiano, Michael; McAvoy, Darren J.
    Federal land managers in the United States are permitted to manage wildfires with strategies other than full suppression under appropriate conditions to achieve natural resource objectives. However, policy and scientific support for “managed wildfire” appear insufficient to support its broad use. We conducted case studies in northern New Mexico and southwestern Utah to examine how managers and stakeholders navigated shifting barriers and opportunities to use managed wildfire from 2018-2021. Use of managed wildfire was fostered through an active network of civil society partnerships in one case, and strong interagency cooperation and existing policies and plans in the other. In both, the COVID-19 pandemic, drought, and agency direction curtailed recent use. Local context shapes wildfire response strategies, yet centralized decision making and policy also can enable or constrain them. Future research could refine understanding of social factors in incident decision making, and evaluation of risks and tradeoffs in wildfire response.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Code Descriptions for “Spanning boundaries for managing wildfire risk in forest and range landscapes: Lessons from case studies in the western United States.”
    (University of Oregon, 2021) Davis, Emily Jane; Huber-Stearns, Heidi R.; Cheng, Antony S.; Deak, Alison
    Managing wildfire risk across boundaries and scales is critical in fire-prone landscapes around the world, as a variety of actors undertake mitigation and response activities according to jurisdictional and administrative boundaries; and available human, organizational, technical, and financial resources. There is a need to catalyze their coordination more effectively to collectively manage wildfire risk. We interviewed 102 people across five large landscape case studies in the western US to categorize how boundary spanning people, organizations, settings, concepts, and objects were deployed in range and forestlands to collectively address wildfire risk. Across all cases, actors spanned jurisdictional, conceptual, and administrative boundaries to create: 1) conductive settings for boundary work to occur; 2) concepts to communicate across boundaries; and 3) concrete objects as joint reference points, and to navigate challenges to implementing work on the ground. This work highlights context-specific ways to advance cross-boundary wildfire risk reduction efforts, and uses a boundary spanning lens to provide insight into how collective action in wildfire management evolves in different settings. This research also shows prescribed fire as a gateway for future collective action in wildfire risk, including managing naturally ignited wildfires for resource benefits or improved coordination and communication during wildfire suppression efforts.