Examining the influence of biophysical conditions on wildland&amp;#8211;urban interface homeowners&amp;#8217; wildfire risk mitigation activities in fire-prone landscapes

Olsen, Christine S.; Kline, Jeffrey D.; Ager, Alan A.; Olsen, Keith A.; Short, Karen C.

doi:10.5751/es-09054-220121

Cited by 55 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…(1) Shared understanding: Risk perception is one important influence on wildfire risk reduction behavior among landowners and homeowners (McCaffrey 2008, Fischer and Charnley 2012, Olsen et al 2017. Family forest owners who participated in our cases perceived a high level of concern about wildfire occurring on their property and spreading to their property from adjacent ownerships (unpublished survey data), as did public landowners interviewed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Fostering collective action to reduce wildfire risk across property boundaries in the American West

Charnley

Kelly

Fischer

2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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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 public good (fire-resilient forests), and empirical examples of collective action from six projects that are part of the US Forest Service-Natural Resources Conservation Service Joint Chiefs' Landscape Restoration Partnership. Our findings are based on qualitative, semi-structured interviews conducted with 104 individuals who were purposively selected to represent the diverse stakeholders involved in these projects. Fostering collective action to restore fire-resilient forests entails getting as many landowners (especially large landowners) to participate in wildfire risk reduction as possible to increase its areal extent; and landowner coordination in planning and implementing strategicallydesigned restoration treatments to optimize their effectiveness. We identify factors that enabled and constrained landowner participation and coordination in the Joint Chiefs' projects. Based on our findings and theory about when collective action will emerge, we specify a suite of practices to promote collective action for wildfire risk reduction across property boundaries, emphasizing incentives and enabling conditions. These include proactive education and outreach targeting landowners; multi-stakeholder processes with broad landowner representation to develop coordinated management approaches; financial and technical assistance to support fuels treatments on all ownerships within similar time frames; strong partnerships; and using common forestry professionals to plan and implement treatments on different ownerships (especially private lands). Our findings can inform cross-boundary management for landscape-scale conservation and restoration in other contexts.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Fostering collective action to reduce wildfire risk across property boundaries in the American West

Charnley

Kelly

Fischer

2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…We did not report the results of actions by homeowners to adopt defensible space behaviors that reduce risk at the homesite scale. Olsen et al (2017) found that almost 80% of the homes in the study area adopted some component of defensible space practices, and that these actions were more likely in locations characterized by heighted fire hazard, suggesting that a high level of risk mitigation occurs across the population of homes. Our results suggest that land management actions in this area can reduce the potential for losses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using an agent-based model to examine forest management outcomes in a fire-prone landscape in Oregon, USA

Spies¹,

White²,

Ager³

et al. 2017

E&S

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. 2017. Using an agent-based model to examine forest management outcomes in a fire-prone landscape in Oregon, USA. Ecology and Society 22 (1) ABSTRACT. Fire-prone landscapes present many challenges for both managers and policy makers in developing adaptive behaviors and institutions. We used a coupled human and natural systems framework and an agent-based landscape model to examine how alternative management scenarios affect fire and ecosystem services metrics in a fire-prone multiownership landscape in the eastern Cascades of Oregon. Our model incorporated existing models of vegetation succession and fire spread and information from original empirical studies of landowner decision making. Our findings indicate that alternative management strategies can have variable effects on landscape outcomes over 50 years for fire, socioeconomic, and ecosystem services metrics. For example, scenarios with federal restoration treatments had slightly less high-severity fire than a scenario without treatment; exposure of homes in the wildland-urban interface to fire was also slightly less with restoration treatments compared to no management. Treatments appeared to be more effective at reducing high-severity fire in years with more fire than in years with less fire. Under the current management scenario, timber production could be maintained for at least 50 years on federal lands. Under an accelerated restoration scenario, timber production fell because of a shortage of areas meeting current stand structure treatment targets. Trade-offs between restoration outcomes (e.g., open forests with large fire-resistant trees) and habitat for species that require dense older forests were evident. For example, the proportional area of nesting habitat for northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) was somewhat less after 50 years under the restoration scenarios than under no management. However, the amount of resilient older forest structure and habitat for white-headed woodpecker (Leuconotopicus albolarvatus) was higher after 50 years under active management. More carbon was stored on this landscape without management than with management, despite the occurrence of high-severity wildfire. Our results and further applications of the model could be used in collaborative settings to facilitate discussion and development of policies and practices for fire-prone landscapes.

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“…In hindsight, we may have been overly ambitious in this Ecology and Society 22(3): 25 https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss3/art25/ goal at the outset given the relative lack of available research on key network components, structure, and function. Although we did find statistically significant social network effects in our actor behavior models for family forest owners and homeowners (e.g., Olsen et al 2017), we were unable to fully represent these in the ABM because of limitations in our ability to model changes in social networks themselves. Difficulties arose mostly because we did not collect empirical information that described interactions among social network dynamics, actor behavior, and landscape change.…”

Section: What We Learned About Actor Behavior and How To Represent Itmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…For each actor group, substudies sought to (1) examine the landscape management activities that actors undertake; (2) explain actors' decision-making processes, including their goals, decision frameworks (e.g., policy directives), and wildfire risk perceptions; (3) identify biophysical and social factors that influence actors' forest management and wildfire risk mitigation behaviors; and (4) use these data to develop decision rules to be programmed into the ABM to represent actors' behaviors. Additional details about some of these individual substudies can be found in , Olsen et al (2017), and Steen-Adams et al (2017). The result was the application of a mix of methodological approaches to examine the forest management and wildfire risk mitigation behaviors of the different actor groups.…”

Section: How We Conducted Our Social Science Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Details about the CHANS project, ABM, and landscape simulations can be found in Barros et al (2017), Spies et al (2017), and Shindler et al (2017). Details about individual social science contributions can be found in Charnley et al (2017), Olsen et al (2017), andSteen-Adams et al (2017). We highlight the lessons we learned as a team of social scientists who developed decision rules for the ABM, identify challenges we encountered, and discuss their implications for CHANS research.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrating social science into empirical models of coupled human and natural systems

Kline¹,

White²,

Fischer³

et al. 2017

E&S

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ABSTRACT. Coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) research highlights reciprocal interactions (or feedbacks) between biophysical and socioeconomic variables to explain system dynamics and resilience. Empirical models often are used to test hypotheses and apply theory that represent human behavior. Parameterizing reciprocal interactions presents two challenges for social scientists:(1) how to represent human behavior as influenced by biophysical factors and integrate this into CHANS empirical models; (2) how to organize and function as a multidisciplinary social science team to accomplish that task. We reflect on these challenges regarding our CHANS research that investigated human adaptation to fire-prone landscapes. Our project sought to characterize the forest management activities of land managers and landowners (or "actors") and their influence on wildfire behavior and landscape outcomes by focusing on biophysical and socioeconomic feedbacks in central Oregon (USA). We used an agent-based model (ABM) to compile biophysical and social information pertaining to actor behavior, and to project future landscape conditions under alternative management scenarios. Project social scientists were tasked with identifying actors' forest management activities and biophysical and socioeconomic factors that influence them, and with developing decision rules for incorporation into the ABM to represent actor behavior. We (1) briefly summarize what we learned about actor behavior on this fire-prone landscape and how we represented it in an ABM, and (2) more significantly, report our observations about how we organized and functioned as a diverse team of social scientists to fulfill these CHANS research tasks. We highlight several challenges we experienced, involving quantitative versus qualitative data and methods, distilling complex behavior into empirical models, varying sensitivity of biophysical models to social factors, synchronization of research tasks, and the need to substitute spatial for temporal variation in social data and models, among others. We offer recommendations that other research teams might consider when collaborating with social scientists in CHANS research.

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Examining the influence of biophysical conditions on wildland–urban interface homeowners’ wildfire risk mitigation activities in fire-prone landscapes

Cited by 55 publications

References 39 publications

Fostering collective action to reduce wildfire risk across property boundaries in the American West

Fostering collective action to reduce wildfire risk across property boundaries in the American West

Using an agent-based model to examine forest management outcomes in a fire-prone landscape in Oregon, USA

Integrating social science into empirical models of coupled human and natural systems

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