Wildfire Policy Research Articles

Understanding stakeholders' perspectives behind wildfires in Sicily: A Q‐methodology approach

Abstract Mediterranean wildfires persistently challenge regions due to climatic factors, changing land use, and abandonment of rural areas, posing threats to both ecosystems and human well‐being. Current fire management emphasizes fire exclusion, neglecting traditional methods and socio‐ ecological processes, thereby elevating the risk of catastrophic events and negatively impacting ecosystems. Collaborative efforts among stakeholders and decision makers are essential for effective wildfire mitigation; lack of engagement perpetuates conflicts, underscoring the need to integrate diverse perspectives to enhance environmental management policies. Focusing on Monreale, Sicily, as a representative of fire‐prone Mediterranean landscapes, this study uses Q‐Methodology to investigate stakeholder attitudes toward the causes and drivers of wildfires. Using Q‐Methodology, the research identifies shared values and discrepancies among stakeholders, revealing information on acceptable wildfire policies by discerning areas of consensus. The paper delves into various perspectives on socioeconomic and political dimensions in Sicily, unravelling conflicts and consensus areas for advancing fire management objectives. It concludes with policy insights and recommendations for future research. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Wildfire Burnt Area and Associated Greenhouse Gas Emissions under Future Climate Change Scenarios in the Mediterranean: Developing a Robust Estimation Approach

Wildfires burn annually over 400,000 ha in Mediterranean countries. By the end of the 21st century, wildfire Burnt Area (BA) and associated Green House Gas (GHG) emissions may double to triple due to climate change. Regional projections of future BA are urgently required to update wildfire policies. We present a robust methodology for estimating regional wildfire BA and GHG emissions under future climate change scenarios in the Mediterranean. The Fire Weather Index, selected drought indices, and meteorological variables were correlated against BA/GHG emissions data to create area-specific statistical projection models. State-of-the-art regional climate models (horizontal resolution: 12 km), developed within the EURO-CORDEX initiative, simulated data under three climate change scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5) up to 2070. These data drove the statistical models to estimate future wildfire BA and GHG emissions in three pilot areas in Greece, Montenegro, and France. Wildfire BA is projected to increase by 20% to 130% up to 2070, depending on the study area and climate scenario. The future expansion of fire-prone areas into the north Mediterranean and mountain environments is particularly alarming, given the large biomass present here. Fire-smart landscape management may, however, greatly reduce the projected future wildfire BA and GHG increases.

You are a hero! The influence of audience‐as‐hero narratives on policy support

AbstractEffective communication increases support for policy measures. This article argues that a narrative that portrays a policy's target group as a hero is most effective in generating support for the given policy. The research builds on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to test the influence of an audience‐as‐hero narrative on the opinion about a new campfire regulation among visitors to a national park in Russia. A survey experiment with 314 visitors to the national park compares the influence of a narrative portraying the regulation's target group as a hero (a park visitor) on policy opinion and a narrative portraying another hero (a firefighter). Results show that the audience‐as‐hero narrative has more influence on policy support than a nonnarrative message and also more than a narrative portraying another hero. This indicates that audience‐as‐hero narratives are particularly effective in generating support for policies.Related ArticlesCrow, Deserai A., Lydia A. Lawhon, John Berggren, Juhi Huda, Elizabeth Koebele, and Adrianne Kroepsch. 2017. “A Narrative Policy Framework Analysis of Wildfire Policy Discussions in Two Colorado Communities.” Politics & Policy 45(4): 626–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12207.Shanahan, Elizabeth A., Mark K. McBeth, and Paul L. Hathaway. 2011. “Narrative Policy Framework: The Influence of Media Policy Narrative on Public Opinion.” Politics & Policy 39(3): 373–400. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00295.x/abstract.Smith‐Walter, Aaron, Holly L. Peterson, Michael D. Jones, and Ashley Nicole Reynolds Marshall. 2016. “Gun Stories: How Evidence Shapes Firearm Policy in the United States.” Politics & Policy 44: 1053–88. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12187/full.

Wildfire Management Strategy and Its Relation to Operational Risk

Abstract Changes to US wildfire policy in 2009 blurred the distinction between fires managed for resource benefits and fires with primarily suppression objectives, making management strategies difficult to track. Here, qualitative text is coded from a sample of 282 Wildland Fire Decision Support System Relative Risk Assessments completed on wildfires between 2010 and 2017 to examine the prevalence of different strategies and their associations with risk. Suppression is used most, associated with high risk. Managers discuss intent to suppress even when it is untenable. Monitoring, confine, or point protection are used much less commonly and when risk is low. The Southwest region discusses a diversity of strategies, leveraging landscape barriers from past management to support them; the Northwest discusses suppression or monitoring and rarely links strategy selection to barriers. Based on associations between physical barriers to fire spread, risk, and strategy, creating more barriers may provide a path forward to better implement fire policy. Study Implications: Systematic analysis of text data in wildfire decision documents provides insights into how fires are managed. Most wildfires are still aggressively suppressed despite federal fire policy promoting the use of fire to enhance resources. When managers discuss risk during wildfires, it is evident that physical barriers to fire spread (e.g., rivers, roads, trails, rocky scree), including mechanical fuel treatments, prescribed fires, and previous wildfires, are important factors in operational fire planning. However, management strategies promoting the use of wildfire to enhance ecological resiliency or reduce transmission of future fires to values are used sparingly. Southwest fire managers are relying on past wildfires, fuel treatments, and prescribed fires more so than the Northwest to engage in a full spectrum of fire management strategies. This finding suggests that, at least in some geographies, ongoing investments in fuels management will pay dividends in reducing risk and broadening opportunities to meet federal policy goals.

Governance drivers hinder and support a paradigm shift in wildfire risk management in Italy

Fire is a fundamental social-ecological process, but a combination of changing climate, land use and values at risk is increasing the incidence of large wildfires with high societal and biodiversity impacts. Academic and practitioner understanding is now converging around the need to manage fire risk as an outcome of intersecting governance regimes, comprising geohistorically defined institutions and decision-making pathways shaped by earlier wildfires. We investigate this proposition through a case study of Italy, a country greatly affected by wildfire and characterised by strong organisational, socio-cultural and geographical variation nationally. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study collecting and analysing qualitative data on how different national and sub-national governance procedures interrelate to promote particular risk management strategies, and support or impede adaptive change. Participants in key agencies were consulted across seven nationally representative regions. Findings show a highly fragmented institutional structure, where wildfire policy responsibilities are increasingly allocated to disparate organisations at a variety of scales. Local stakeholder participation has been displaced by this shift to extra-local actors and networks. While institutions are formally committed to adopting a precautionary approach to wildfire risk, in practice, emergency response remains the default choice, as a result of patchy and uncoordinated legislation. Notably, the wider national and international (EU) regulatory context plays a muted role in governing wildfires. We present our results as a novel action research agenda for Italy and southern Europe more generally, emphasising the urgent need to develop new anticipatory systems of wildfire incidence through closer integration of cross-scale governance arrangements.

Factors influencing wildfire management decisions after the 2009 US federal policy update

Background The decision making process undertaken during wildfire responses is complex and prone to uncertainty. In the US, decisions federal land managers make are influenced by numerous and often competing factors. Aims To assess and validate the presence of decision factors relevant to the wildfire decision making context that were previously known and to identify those that have emerged since the US federal wildfire policy was updated in 2009. Methods Interviews were conducted across the US while wildfires were actively burning to elucidate time-of-fire decision factors. Data were coded and thematically analysed. Key results Most previously known decision factors as well as numerous emergent factors were identified. Conclusions To contextualise decision factors within the decision making process, we offer a Wildfire Decision Framework that has value for policy makers seeking to improve decision making, managers improving their process and wildfire social science researchers. Implications Managers may gain a better understanding of their decision environment and use our framework as a tool to validate their deliberations. Researchers may use these data to help explain the various pressures and influences modern land and wildfire managers experience. Policy makers and agencies may take institutional steps to align the actions of their staff with desired wildfire outcomes.

Enhancing infrastructure resilience in wildfire management to face extreme events: Insights from the Iberian Peninsula

Factors such as human activity and climate change are contributing to an increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires. This problem has challenged society’s knowledge, response capacity, and resilience, revealing its inadequacy to cope with the new wildfire regime characterized by extreme wildfire events (EWE). Policies on wildfire management mainly focus on suppression and managing emergencies, which may be insufficient to reduce EWE’s incidence and cope with its impact. Consequently, there is a lack of tools to support decision-making in wildfire management in other important aspects, such as prevention and protection. This study examines global wildfire policies specifically in the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain), including cross-border policies. A GIS-based tool to evaluate different normal and extreme wildfire management policies is applied to a cross-border case study, paying attention to the impact on critical land-based transport systems. A relevant outcome of the tool application is that suppression must be complemented with other wildfire management strategies in the analyzed area. The gained insights can help stakeholders to improve decision-making in wildfire management to successfully address EWE.

Improving societal resilience through a GIS-based approach to manage road transport networks under wildfire hazards

Climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires, demonstrating that our capacity to respond to them is insufficient. Therefore, it is necessary to reconsider wildfire management policies, practices, and decision-support tools, extending beyond emergency measures. This study presents the extension of a GIS-based methodology for fire analysis, providing decision-making support for the implementation of new fire-related policies for road transportation infrastructure. It represents a novel contribution that facilitates the transition towards proactive wildfire policies. The framework is demonstrated to support informed decision-making, addressing both reactive actions, i.e., emergency response, and the evaluation of proactive adaptation measures at a system level. The results suggest that landscape management policies can play an important role in improving the resilience of road networks to wildfires.

Cultural Theory, Wildfire Information Source, and Agency Public Trust: A Central Oregon Case Study.

With the increasing occurrence and severity of wildfires in the U.S., and especially in the forests and rangelands of the western U.S., it is important to know which wildfire information sources are trusted by households and the amount of trust placed on natural resources agencies to manage for wildfire. The Theory of Motivated Reasoning suggests that people will trust and use those information sources that conform to their own value and ideological orientations. Similarly, trust in natural resource agencies' ability to manage wildfire may also be the result of cultural traits. This study uses Cultural Theory as a theoretical perspective to determine those value systems, and how cultural traits motivate people to use and trust various wildfire information sources and the agencies tasked with managing wildfire. Using random sample surveys of Wildland-Urban-Interface (WUI) households in fire-prone Deschutes County in central Oregon, the study finds that egalitarians are significantly more likely than those with other cultural traits to use and trust natural resource agency information sources, while individualists are more likely to use and trust family members and neighbors for their information. Similarly, egalitarians are trusting of natural resource managers to use prescribed fire, manage naturally ignited fires, and to thin forests to reduce fuels. Individualists are less trusting of government agencies to use the same approaches to reduce fuels. The study concludes with some suggestions for how wildfire policy makers and managers can use these findings to communicate more effectively important wildfire information to audiences with differing cultural traits and differing levels of natural resource agency trust.

A global outlook on increasing wildfire risk: Current policy situation and future pathways

Aimto understand how wildfire risk policies are designed to mitigate11The goal of the analysis here is not to promote wildfire exclusion, but to reduce the likelihood of fire ignition and manage the growth and intensity of wildfire events. the impacts of wildfires. Wildfires are a growing threat in many parts of the world, posing significant risks to human life, and the environment. In recent years, wildfires have increased, driven largely by climate change, human activity, and changes in land-use patterns. Wildfire risk adaptation and mitigation measures vary widely between countries and regions around the world. Therefore, it is essential to develop a comprehensive policy approach to mitigate wildfire risks and promote sustainable forest and land management practices. This article aims to provide insight into wildfire policies, implementation actions, and their effectiveness by describing wildfire policies centered mainly on exclusion and wildfire risk mitigation. Methodologythe article examines existing wildfire-related policies and relevant literature based on 10 systematic factors. Further exploring how these policies can be enhanced to meet the challenges of the coming years for six European countries (Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, UK) as well as Australia, Canada, USA, and South Africa. ResultsThe status quo, perceived strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations from key-informants were presented to enhance wildfire policies in each country. ConclusionsThe article analyses current wildfire policies in fire-prone countries, highlighting regional variations and the need for an integrated management strategy. It offers country-specific recommendations based on the participants viewpoints, for coordinated efforts to mitigate wildfire risks and promote sustainable forest management.

Assessing public preferences for a wildfire mitigation policy in Crete, Greece

The increased frequency and severity of wildfires in the Mediterranean region generates significant damages in ecosystems and landscapes while harming human populations. Institutional complexities, along with socioeconomic and demographic changes encouraging development into the wildland-urban interface, rural abandonment, and focus on fire suppression, are increasing the vulnerability and flammability of Mediterranean ecosystems. Developing effective strategies for managing wildfire incidence and its aftermath requires understanding of the public preferences for wildfire policy characteristics. Here we elicit public preferences for wildfire mitigation policies employing a stated choice experiment applied in Crete, Greece. A region with typical Mediterranean landscape experiencing significant development and rural-to-urban migration that disrupts existing fire regimes. We estimate conditional logit, mixed logit and latent class models to study the general public's preferences and willingness to pay for limiting wildfire frequency and agricultural land burnt, maintaining landscape features, and managing post-wildfire recovery. Results of our study show that measures to manage post-wildfire damage are consistently valued as the most positive amongst the sampled respondents, achieving values that range between €25.92 in conditional logit model to €46 in one of the latent classes identified. Improving the landscape quality follows in importance, although it shows more heterogeneity in the responses. The latent class approach allowed to identify that those associated with either the agricultural or the tourism sector of the sampled individuals, displayed significantly different preferences for the proposed attributes. Overall, our findings indicate that there is a strong preference amongst the general public to shift current policies based on suppression towards more integrated approaches dealing both with prevention and post-fire management. The outcomes of this study serve to guide decision makers on targeted management plans based on their audience.

Indigenous use of fire in the paramo ecosystem of southern Ecuador: a case study using remote sensing methods and ancestral knowledge of the Kichwa Saraguro people

BackgroundThe Indigenous Kichwa Saraguro people of southern Ecuador have long relied on traditional burning to manage their environment. However, their traditional use of fire in one of the most important ecosystems in southern Ecuador, the herbaceous paramo, is not well known. This lack of knowledge does not allow for the improvement of local regulations related to integrated fire management, which is a shortcoming compared to other regulations applied in South America. In this context, and to understand the impacts of the Indigenous use of fire, a climatic analysis of the area was carried out, generating a historical climograph (period: years 1981–2021) and four annual climographs that were contrasted with a remote sensing study of fire severity over 4 years (years 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021). In addition, traditional fire use was determined through the application of semi-structured interview questionnaires applied to 61 women and 89 men, whose data were analyzed with the level of information fidelity (LIF), informant consensus factor (ICF), and principal component analysis (PCA). Therefore, in this study, we argue that it is important to incorporate the concepts of (i) wildfire severity and (ii) cultural burning in wildfire policies and regulations in southern Ecuador.ResultsThe results indicate that low-severity fires occur within the Saraguro territory and that fire use knowledge is transmitted to new generations incorporating both how and where to perform traditional burning. They also know when to burn using the burning calendar that is generally applied during the climatic phenomenon known as “Veranillo del Niño” (VdN).ConclusionsThese results can help decision-makers design policies, regulations, and proposals for the correct use of fire as a tool for the management of ecosystems in southern Ecuador affected by wildfires. In addition, the results can be used to improve the National Strategy for Integrated Fire Management 2021–2025 promoted by the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition of Ecuador.

Evaluating Incentive-Driven Policies to Reduce Social Losses Associated with Wildfire Risk Misinformation

Wildfires have caused significant ecological and social losses in terms of forest benefits, private dwellings, and suppression costs. Although great efforts have been made in wildfire policies and wildfire-mitigating strategies on private and public lands, devastating wildfires continue to occur. This implies there is a need for effective incentive-driven policies to encourage forest owners to undertake an increasing level of wildfire-mitigating actions. This study evaluates the effectiveness of alternative incentive-driven policies for the problem of two adjacent forest owners under various scenarios of misinformation about wildfire occurrence and spread using a stochastic dynamic model. The study also investigates how the implementation of these policies encourages wildfire-mitigating actions, yields larger reductions in social losses, and alleviates free-riding behavior. The outcomes of the analysis confirm that the effectiveness of incentive programs in reducing social losses and increasing forest value is influenced by the level of misinformation held by a forest owner when making wildfire prevention decisions. The results also revealed that fuel stock regulation is more effective at mitigating wildfire damages and associated costs than cost-share programs under all misinformation scenarios. It was also found that fuel stock regulation could correct free-riding behavior due to the restrictive nature of this policy. The findings provide additional motivation for educational programs that seek to improve forest owners’ knowledge about the private benefits of fuel removal and collaboration efforts between neighboring forest owners. Collaborative efforts could yield substantial savings for the government through eliminating cost-share programs and reducing suppression costs.

The Role of Natural Resource Valuation in Australian Regional Forestry Management

Wildfires during the 2019–2020 Australian fire season killed 33 people and more than 1 billion animals, destroying almost 40 million acres of bushland and more than 3,500 homes. The objective of this analysis is to identify regional forestry management weaknesses that may have exacerbated these losses, focusing on economic components of existing Regional Forestry Agreements (RFAs). I accomplish this objective by reviewing the RFA development process, mapping RFA content to international climate change frameworks, and comparing RFA contents with pertinent economic literature findings. I find that RFAs’ development and implementation relied on market valuation of forest products while excluding nonmarket environmental values. The connections from RFAs to international climate and domestic wildfire policy were weak. Furthermore, RFAs disregarded moral hazard around plantation forest management and wildfire mitigation risk. Future RFA development needs to include nonmarket valuation of a suite of environmental resources, recognition of dynamic wildfire risks in the midst of climate change, precise descriptions of private and federal plantation forest wildfire prevention responsibilities, and explicit connections between RFAs and state and federal policy to mitigate wildfire risk.

Dynamics of pollutant emissions from wildfires in Mainland China

We analyzed the dynamics of pollutant emissions from wildfires in mainland China from 2001 to 2019 using MODIS fire products combined with the measurements of emission factors of different vegetation types. The biomass distribution in Mainland China has heterogeneous temporal and spatial pattern, with inter-year variations and a decreasing trend from east to west. Overall, from 2001 to 2019, biomass combustion in Mainland China reached 479.59Tg (25.24Tg·a-1), in which northeast, north, east, south, central, northwest, and southwest regions accounted for 20.95%, 31.14%, 8.89%, 9.06%, 3.98%, 0.33% and 25.64% of total biomass combustion, respectively. The emissions of CO, CO2, CxHy, NOx, PM2.5, TC, OC and EC were 47.30, 288.05, 12.90, 0.40, 1.43, 0.83, 0.70, and 0.12Tg (1Tg=1012g), respectively. PM2.5, TC and OC emissions increased in the southwest, while all pollutant emissions declined significantly in the southern region. For particulate matter from wildfires, both the ratio of its emissions to total dust and the ratio of its concentration to atmospheric PM2.5 showed an increasing trend, implying that the relative environmental impacts of particulate emissions from wildfires may be rising. In addition, our results show that the current Chinese wildfire management has successfully reduced on average more than 80% of pollutant emissions from wildfire from 2001 to 2019 compared to the natural wildfire regime (no strict wildfire management). This research on the temporal-spatial changes of pollutant emissions from wildfires in Mainland China provides support for further exploration of wildfire impacts on regional environments, and indicates the effectiveness of Chinese current wildfire policy on the pollutant emission mitigation.

Is seeing believing? Comparing the influence of textual and visual policy narratives on public opinion

AbstractScholars have used the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) to explain public opinion on a variety of policy issues and across venues. Recent work in the NPF has expanded the application of the framework beyond textual formats to accommodate policy narratives that are visual in nature. This article asks whether individuals respond differently to visual versus text‐based narratives. The research argues that visuals are more easily understood, dramatic, and memorable than text, suggesting that visual narratives may have a greater influence on policy attitudes. I explore these possibilities using Twitter narratives related to the Dakota Access Pipeline in the United States. Exposure to visual narratives significantly increased perception of issue importance, but contrary to expectations, visual narratives were no more effective at enhancing information recall, shifting attitudes, and encouraging activism than textual narratives. The article discusses possible reasons for these findings, the implications for narrative persuasion, and suggestions for future avenues of research.Related ArticlesChang, Katherine T., and Elizabeth A. Koebele. 2020. “What Drives Coalitions' Narrative Strategy? Exploring Policy Narratives around School Choice.” Politics & Policy 48(4): 618–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12367.Crow, Deserai A., Lydia A. Lawhon, John Berggren, Juhi Huda, Elizabeth Koebele, and Adrianne Kroepsch. 2017. “A Narrative Policy Framework Analysis of Wildfire Policy Discussions in Two Colorado Communities.” Politics & Policy 45(4): 626–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12207.Shanahan, Elizabeth A., Mark K. McBeth, and Paul L. Hathaway. 2011. “Narrative Policy Framework: The Influence of Media Policy Narrative on Public Opinion.” Politics & Policy 39(3): 373–400. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00295.x.

Toward a Holistic Approach: Considerations for Improved Collaboration in Wildfire Management

State and Federal agencies in the United States manage wildland fires to minimize forest loss and reduce fire impacts on communities living near forests. Despite changes to policy that emphasize the importance of collaborative management with Tribes and local communities, stakeholders with place-based knowledge still have limited access to meaningful participation in policy development and management planning. These barriers contribute to the alienation of communities disproportionately burdened with the negative impacts of wildfire. Reduced community-level support and a lack of inclusive practices regarding place-based knowledge result in less robust management plans and poor ecological outcomes. These outcomes highlight the need for improved multi-stakeholder collaborations that holistically address interconnected management areas. In this paper, Federal wildfire policy development and implementation are assessed to identify barriers to collaborative management. An examination of multi-stakeholder fire management organizations showed that coupling of federal policy, practices and norms and the underrepresentation of external stakeholders may hinder progress toward collaborative partnerships. A linguistic examination of federal wildfire policy showed that directive, rather than cooperative language predominated. This may promote unequal power-sharing dynamics that reduce opportunities for federal engagement and collaboration with stakeholders from Tribes and local communities. Tribal barriers to equitable partnership and decision-making were found to be tied to culturally mediated frameworks for environmental management. Based on these findings, this article offers suggestions for changes to policy and institutional culture that will allow for an inclusive, holistic fire management model.

Climate change and western wildfires.

This feature explores topics of enduring ecological concern: fire regimes, climate change and forest management of the North American West. The authors describe the dual challenges of past forest management legacies and fire exclusion confronted by a changing fire regime due to the coupling of stark climatic changes and abundant fuels. They argue for intentional management to create more drought- and fire-resilient forests, emphasizing key forest characteristics that conserve biodiversity and ecosystem values, while recognizing that this implies the use of mechanical thinning, prescribed burning and managed wildfire as tools. The debate, therefore, involves disparate views of how North American forests functioned a century or more ago, historical variation in climate and fire interactions, and the costs of not increasing the pace and scale of climate adaptation. Conversely, the debate also involves values and aspirations, recognition of the role of indigenous fire stewardship, conflict between preservation of wild forests and rural livelihoods, and social acceptance of the tools available for building resilience. The toolkit for rebuilding landscape resilience involves hard choices. These include changes to management of the wildland/urban interface, the risks and benefits of prescribed burning and managed wildfire policies, and the benefits and consequences of active timber harvesting and burning to reduce fuels. The stakeholders are many, including indigenous peoples, rural communities whose livelihoods depend on natural resources, wilderness advocates, fire professionals who put their lives on the line, and all those individuals and livelihoods impacted by wildfire smoke and the increasing burned area. The financial stakes are also high. The cost of firefighting in the USA alone is in the billions each year and growing, the value of real estate and other key infrastructure in the “red zone” is far higher than that, and the value of the lives at stake and treasured ecosystems are priceless. As a result, the substantive scientific discussion intersects fundamental human issues and, ultimately, the conversation must address scientific knowledge, values and social choices. The authors of this feature tackle the challenge of creating resilience to fire in a changing climate in each of these dimensions. They identify what is known and what remains uncertain so that the management of western North American forests can be upheld on the basis of strong evidence while informed by core social values. The significance of this work goes beyond the specific problem of western North American wildfire and speaks to the management of ecosystems in a no-analog future, in which the Earth’s systems reflect a history of intensifying exploitation and management under a changing climate. The intellectual challenge to ecology and ecologists is to imagine an ever-changing human-dominated world, where ecosystems are dynamically resilient to a warmer, more fire-prone world. In this new reality, the past may inform the future, but it no longer provides simple archetypes to restore toward; systems resilient to Holocene variation may be starkly vulnerable in a warmer, drier and more variable Anthropocene climate. This set of papers directly addresses one very large region but has implications for ecosystems globally.

Comparing social constructions of wildfire risk across media, government, and participatory discourse in a Colorado fireshed

This study examined how wildfire risk is framed by different entities and actors within a common region, during and after experiencing several large wildfire events. Using a social constructionist lens, we viewed wildfire risk as a fluid and variable concept that is socially constructed and framed through public discourse. Inconsistent social constructions of wildfire risk may pose challenges for effective wildfire risk governance and management, which requires the coordination of diverse entities including government, land managers, homeowners, and community groups. We sought to understand differing social constructions of wildfire risk within one region, the Northern Colorado Front Range, across four domains of social discourse: mainstream media coverage, governmental planning documents, a community collaborative group’s meeting notes, and Community Wildfire Protection Plans. Through multiple rounds of qualitative coding, we compared how values at risk, causes of risk, and solutions to mitigate risk are framed across discourse domains. We also identified which agencies, organizations, or other actors’ voices were most prominent within each domain. Our results show inconsistent framings of wildfire risk definition across the data, building upon past literature that has identified divides between fire suppression and mitigation work, as well as disconnects between media representations of fire and perspectives of resource managers and scientists. Lastly, we highlight two examples of cross-cutting discourses - public drinking water and smoke – as concepts that span boundaries and may have the power to generate broader coordination and support for wildfire policy solutions and action.

Preemptive Incentives and Liability Rules for Wildfire Risk Management

Wildfires in the U.S. are growing in extent and severity, causing billions of dollars in damage each year. Wildfire policy has increased its focus on integrating fire suppression with risk mitigation through fuel reduction. In this context incentives to elicit management activities that mitigate fire risk are critical, because landowners may not carry out sufficient risk mitigation on their own. We examine the effectiveness and welfare implications of several incentive policies, including two novel approaches not studied in the context of wildfire management: liability rules and voluntary agreements. Our analysis uses a threshold model of public good provision, which allows for each landowner's mitigation choices to depend on the total amount of mitigation in the landscape. Our results suggest that the risk mitigation threshold is critical in determining the effectiveness and welfare effects of different incentive programs. When the threshold is high, only voluntary agreements and cost sharing can increase mitigation effort and welfare. Negligence standards can also be effective and welfare enhancing but only when the mitigation threshold is sufficiently low.