Mapping Community Capacity to Reduce Vulnerability to Wildfire in Colorado, USA
Communities can face significant risk from wildfire, often compounded by climate change and legacies of industrial forest management.
Communities can face significant risk from wildfire, often compounded by climate change and legacies of industrial forest management.
Dangerous fire weather is increasing under climate change, but there is limited knowledge of how this will affect fire intensity, a critical determinant of the socioecological effects of wildfire.
The frequency, severity, and scale of extreme wildfire events is increasing globally, with certain regions such as the western United States disproportionately impacted. As attention shifts toward understanding how to adapt to and recover from extreme wildfire, there is a need to prioritize where additional research and evidence are needed to inform decision-making.
Existing research indicates that NGOs can serve important roles during recovery from wildfires and other hazard events. Yet less work explores the specific, place-based conditions that influence NGO participation in the recovery process, or the specific tactics they might use when facilitating the transfer of knowledge and resources that meet emergent recovery needs.
Background: In collaborative governance, many of the factors that give rise to the need for collaboration are also identified by scholars as undermining its effectiveness. Complex task environments mean that multiple and varied interests are necessary to address problems, but this inherent pluralism may also increase conflict. This suggests a pluralism paradox.
Effective interventions to prevent human-caused ignitions on public lands play a critical role in social and ecological adaption to wildfire. While wildfire prevention spending generates a high return on investment, funding and capacity to support such programing within federal, state, and local land and fire management agencies remains limited.
Firebrands or embers are a crucial phenomenon in wildfire behaviour. Firebrands – small, burning or smouldering pieces of wood or other flammable materials – can be carried by wind considerable distances, leading to ignition of new fires ahead of the main fire front.
The search and recovery process of fatal fire victims is one of the greatest challenges in forensic anthropology, especially in large-scale wildland fire disasters.
Wildland firefighters play a critical role in managing the complex relationship between humans and fire. To reduce the inherent risks that come with this role, firefighters use safety protocols such as lookouts, communications, escape routes, and safety zones (LCES).
We offer the first study unpacking the taxonomy of collaboratives that undertake wildland fire management and how that taxonomy relates to resilience. We developed a comprehensive inventory totaling 133 collaboratives across twelve states in the western United States. We extracted each collaborative’s vision, mission, program goals, actions, and stakeholder composition.