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• 1. [Article] Re-Envisioning Community-Wildfire Relations in the U.S. West as Adaptive Governance

  Prompted by a series of increasingly destructive, expensive, and highly visible wildfire crises in human communities across the globe, a robust body of scholarship has emerged to theorize, conceptualize, ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Re-Envisioning Community-Wildfire Relations in the U.S. West as Adaptive Governance Author: Abrams, Jesse B., Knapp, Melanie, Paveglio, Travis B., Ellison, Autumn, Moseley, Cassandra, Nielsen-Pincus, Max, Carroll, Matthew S. Year: 2015 Prompted by a series of increasingly destructive, expensive, and highly visible wildfire crises in human communities across the globe, a robust body of scholarship has emerged to theorize, conceptualize, and measure community-level resilience to wildfires. To date, however, insufficient consideration has been given to wildfire resilience as a process of adaptive governance mediated by institutions at multiple scales. Here we explore the possibilities for addressing this gap through an analysis of wildfire resilience among wildland-urban interface communities in the western region of the United States. We re-engage important but overlooked components of social-ecological system resilience by situating rural communities within their state-to national-level institutional contexts; we then analyze two communities in Nevada and New Mexico in terms of their institutional settings and responses to recent wildfire events. We frame our analysis around the concepts of scale matching, linking within and across scales, and institutional flexibility. Title: Re-Envisioning Community-Wildfire Relations in the U.S. West as Adaptive Governance Author: Abrams, Jesse B., Knapp, Melanie, Paveglio, Travis B., Ellison, Autumn, Moseley, Cassandra, Nielsen-Pincus, Max, Carroll, Matthew S. Year: 2015 Prompted by a series of increasingly destructive, expensive, and highly visible wildfire crises in human communities across the globe, a robust body of scholarship has emerged to theorize, conceptualize, and measure community-level resilience to wildfires. To date, however, insufficient consideration has been given to wildfire resilience as a process of adaptive governance mediated by institutions at multiple scales. Here we explore the possibilities for addressing this gap through an analysis of wildfire resilience among wildland-urban interface communities in the western region of the United States. We re-engage important but overlooked components of social-ecological system resilience by situating rural communities within their state-to national-level institutional contexts; we then analyze two communities in Nevada and New Mexico in terms of their institutional settings and responses to recent wildfire events. We frame our analysis around the concepts of scale matching, linking within and across scales, and institutional flexibility. Close

• 2. [Article] Advancing Characterization of Social Diversity in the Wildland-Urban Interface: An Indicator Approach for Wildfire Management

  A growing body of research indicates that communities at risk from wildfire differ in terms of the local social context that influences adaptive planning, mitigations or collective actions. Less work has ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Advancing Characterization of Social Diversity in the Wildland-Urban Interface: An Indicator Approach for Wildfire Management Author: Paveglio, Travis B., Nielsen-Pincus, Max, Abrams, Jesse B., Moseley, Cassandra Year: 2017 A growing body of research indicates that communities at risk from wildfire differ in terms of the local social context that influences adaptive planning, mitigations or collective actions. Less work has attempted to document critical differences in that local social context across large samples. The research presented here explores a quantitative operationalization of an established framework for characterizing the social diversity of communities at risk from wildfire. We conducted structured interviews with key informants across nine U.S. states. Factor analysis, regression and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to characterize social context across communities and relate it to key informant evaluations of progress toward fire adaptation. Our results advance methods to systematically document how social context influences local wildfire adaptation by: (1) examining a preliminary set of quantitative key-informant measures for gauging social context across a range of WUI communities; (2) identifying related elements of social context that may collectively influence wildfire adaptations; (3) providing preliminary statistical evidence that highly related elements of local social context are correlated with expert assessment of local populations’ adaptations to wildfire; and (4) identifying differences in social context characteristics across a sample of western USA WUI communities. However, it also is important to recognize that the measures tested here serve as indicators of deeper conceptual understandings informed by in-depth case studies. Efforts to use these measures should be augmented with additional qualitative work and build from those deeper understandings by considering the complexity of local dynamics surrounding wildfire management. Title: Advancing Characterization of Social Diversity in the Wildland-Urban Interface: An Indicator Approach for Wildfire Management Author: Paveglio, Travis B., Nielsen-Pincus, Max, Abrams, Jesse B., Moseley, Cassandra Year: 2017 A growing body of research indicates that communities at risk from wildfire differ in terms of the local social context that influences adaptive planning, mitigations or collective actions. Less work has attempted to document critical differences in that local social context across large samples. The research presented here explores a quantitative operationalization of an established framework for characterizing the social diversity of communities at risk from wildfire. We conducted structured interviews with key informants across nine U.S. states. Factor analysis, regression and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to characterize social context across communities and relate it to key informant evaluations of progress toward fire adaptation. Our results advance methods to systematically document how social context influences local wildfire adaptation by: (1) examining a preliminary set of quantitative key-informant measures for gauging social context across a range of WUI communities; (2) identifying related elements of social context that may collectively influence wildfire adaptations; (3) providing preliminary statistical evidence that highly related elements of local social context are correlated with expert assessment of local populations’ adaptations to wildfire; and (4) identifying differences in social context characteristics across a sample of western USA WUI communities. However, it also is important to recognize that the measures tested here serve as indicators of deeper conceptual understandings informed by in-depth case studies. Efforts to use these measures should be augmented with additional qualitative work and build from those deeper understandings by considering the complexity of local dynamics surrounding wildfire management. Close

• 3. [Article] The Community Economic Impacts of Large Wildfires: A Case Study from Trinity County, California

  Wildfires are increasing in severity and frequency in the American West, but there is limited understanding of their economic effects at the community level. We conducted a case study of the impacts of ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: The Community Economic Impacts of Large Wildfires: A Case Study from Trinity County, California Author: Davis, Emily Jane, Moseley, Cassandra, Nielsen-Pincus, Max, Jakes, Pamela J. Year: 2014 Wildfires are increasing in severity and frequency in the American West, but there is limited understanding of their economic effects at the community level. We conducted a case study of the impacts of large wildfires in 2008 in Trinity County, California, by examining labor market, suppression spending, and qualitative interview data. We found that the 2008 fires had interrelated effects on several economic sectors in the county. Labor market data indicated a decrease in total private-sector employment and wages and an increase in public-sector employment and wages during the summer of 2008 compared to the previous year, while interviews captured more nuanced impacts for individual businesses. Title: The Community Economic Impacts of Large Wildfires: A Case Study from Trinity County, California Author: Davis, Emily Jane, Moseley, Cassandra, Nielsen-Pincus, Max, Jakes, Pamela J. Year: 2014 Wildfires are increasing in severity and frequency in the American West, but there is limited understanding of their economic effects at the community level. We conducted a case study of the impacts of large wildfires in 2008 in Trinity County, California, by examining labor market, suppression spending, and qualitative interview data. We found that the 2008 fires had interrelated effects on several economic sectors in the county. Labor market data indicated a decrease in total private-sector employment and wages and an increase in public-sector employment and wages during the summer of 2008 compared to the previous year, while interviews captured more nuanced impacts for individual businesses. Close