Travis B. Paveglio

The Science of Firescapes: Achieving Fire-Resilient Communities

Abstract Wildland fire management has reached a crossroads. Current perspectives are not capable of answering interdisciplinary adaptation and mitigation challenges posed by increases in wildfire risk to human populations and the need to reintegrate fire as a vital landscape process. Fire science has been, and continues to be, performed in isolated “silos,” including institutions (e.g., agencies versus universities), organizational structures (e.g., federal agency mandates versus local and state procedures for responding to fire), and research foci (e.g., physical science, natural science, and social science). These silos tend to promote research, management, and policy that focus only on targeted aspects of the “wicked” wildfire problem. In this article, we provide guiding principles to bridge diverse fire science efforts to advance an integrated agenda of wildfire research that can help overcome disciplinary silos and provide insight on how to build fire-resilient communities.

Alternatives to evacuation during wildland fire: exploring adaptive capacity in one Idaho community.

The use of alternatives to evacuation during wildfire events continues to be an intensely debated strategy in the professional and policy circles of numerous fire-prone countries. The most recent chapter comes in response to the Black Saturday Fires in Australia, which has led to policy changes concerning alternatives to evacuation in both Australia and USA. This study explores the local context that influenced the development of alternatives to evacuation in one Idaho community through in-depth interviews with local residents and officials. It acknowledges alternatives as one ‘fire-adaptive behaviour’ of the local community, a key characteristic that US fire professionals identify as a means to better manage wildfire. We apply and extend a recently created adaptive capacity framework for wildfire to uncover specific community characteristics that both led to and reinforce the development of alternatives to evacuation that are tailored to the local population. Identification of these characteristics serves as one important step towards better local assessment of adaptive capacity for a broad classification of ‘fire-adaptive’ behaviours. We conclude that no one combination of local resources can guarantee the development of alternatives to evacuation. Rather, diverse local context will result in different approaches and applicability of the practice.

Nontribal Community Recovery from Wildfire Five Years Later: The Case of the Rodeo–Chediski Fire

Recent literature suggests that natural disasters such as wildfires often have the short-term effect of “bringing people together” while also under some circumstances generating social conflict at the local level. Conflict has been documented particularly when social relations are disembedded by nonlocal entities and there is a perceived loss of local agency. There is less agreement about longer term impacts. We present results of a re-study of a set of communities affected by the largest wildfire in Arizona history. The re-study uses structuration theory to suggest that while local recovery has been generally very successful, vestiges of both fire-related social cohesion and conflict have survived. While some sources of post-fire conflict and cohesion have remained relatively unchanged, others have evolved. We suggest that more needs to be known about the longer term effects of large wildfire events and the role that advanced preparation for such events plays in local recovery.

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, 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 stateto 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.

Wildfire evacuation and its alternatives in a post-Black Saturday landscape: Catchy slogans and cautionary tales

Prior to 2009 the United States and Australia were seeing increased interest, implementation and research support for alternatives to evacuation during wildfire – a broad class of strategies that would enable residents to remain in their homes or other designated safe areas during the pass of a flame front. Yet policy discussion of alternatives to evacuation in both countries shifted in the wake of Australias 2009 Black Saturday Fires, which resulted in 173 deaths and burned approximately 430,000 ha. Soon after, the United States and Australia began implementing new approaches to public and property safety during wildfire events. The goal of this manuscript is to discuss key provisions of these emerging approaches to public safety during wildfire and evaluate their possible legacies. We do so by contrasting approaches in both countries with research insights on alternatives to evacuation during wildfire events. Insights are also paired with broader lessons from research on hazard, risk communication and wildfire. Our analysis provides insight on how emerging approaches could impact broader policy objectives for ‘creating fire-adapted communities’ and/or affect resident responsibility for personal wildfire protection. We suggest ways to influence these possible legacies through careful implementation and possible revision of emerging approaches to public safety during wildfire.

Understanding evacuation preferences and wildfire mitigations among Northwest Montana residents

There is currently insufficient information in the United States about residents’ planned evacuation actions during wildfire events, including any intent to remain at or near home during fire events. This is incompatible with growing evidence that select populations at risk from wildfire are considering alternatives to evacuation. This study explores the evacuation preferences of wildland–urban interface residents in Flathead County, Montana, USA. We compare the performance of wildfire mitigation and fuel reduction actions across groups of residents with different primary evacuation preferences. We also explore what factors (e.g. actions, demographics, attitudes towards government, risk perceptions) help explain residents’ preferences for evacuation. Results suggest that relatively high proportions of residents are interested in staying and defending their homes, with smaller proportions favouring evacuation or passively sheltering in their homes during wildfire. Vegetation management behaviour differs significantly among residents with different evacuation preferences, including significantly higher rates of forest thinning among those intending to remain at home and actively defend their residence. Other results suggest that sex, part-time residency, income and attitudes towards loss from fire are statistically associated with differences in evacuation preferences.

Developing Fire Adapted Communities: The Importance of Interactions Among Elements of Local Context

ABSTRACT Resident perceptions and actions related to wildfire management are influenced by a complex set of factors that are often tied to a specific local context. We conducted in-depth case studies in two diverse communities to better illustrate how elements of local social context collectively influence wildfire perspectives and behaviors in a given locality. Our results suggest that the influence of commonly cited predictors for wildfire mitigation actions, including homeowners’ associations, vegetation preferences, and previous experience with wildfire, can vary based on their interaction with other elements of local context such as residents’ desire for privacy, preferences for wildland or ornamental vegetation, identification as “suburbanites” or “country residents,” and willingness to collectively organize. We compare our results to existing wildfire social science findings and argue for a more holistic view of local social context as a way to design tailored strategies for increasing resident responsibility for wildfire.

Understanding social impact from wildfires: advancing means for assessment

There is no uniform means for assessing social impact from wildland fires beyond statistics such as home loss, suppression costs and the number of residents evacuated. In this paper we argue for and provide a more comprehensive set of considerations for gauging social impact following wildfires. These expanded considerations can advance methods for determining how social impacts from wildfire are changing over time and among diverse communities affected by fire. Our preliminary considerations for social impact from wildfire are drawn from the synthesis of the literature on wildfire and other hazards. We explain how our considerations cover existing research insights and advance them by accounting for wildfire-specific impacts. Considerations are presented as a series of questions that could be answered by an assemblage of outside professionals and local key informants in an affected area for comparison and policy purposes. Those considerations could also be used to advance research questions related to wildfire exposure and impact. We discuss multiple methodological strategies for collecting and analysing data that would be needed to answer considerations presented as part of this synthesis. This includes potential methods for using those considerations to assess social impact across communities.

Simulating effects of land use policies on extent of the wildland urban interface and wildfire risk in Flathead County, Montana

This study used a wildfire loss simulation model to evaluate how different land use policies are likely to influence wildfire risk in the wildland urban interface (WUI) for Flathead County, Montana. The model accounts for the complex socio-ecological interactions among climate change, economic growth, land use change and policy, homeowner mitigations, and forest treatments in Flathead Countys WUI over the five 10-year subperiods comprising the future evaluation period (i.e., 2010-2059). Wildfire risk, defined as expected residential losses from wildfire [E(RLW)], depends on the number of residential properties on parcels, the probability that parcels burn, the probability of wildfire losses to residential structures on properties given the parcels on which those properties are located burn, the average percentage of wildfire-related losses in aesthetic values of residential properties, and the total value (structures plus land) of residential properties. E(RLW) for the five subperiods is simulated for 2010 (referred to as the current), moderately restrictive, and highly restrictive land use policy scenarios, a moderate economic growth scenario and the A2 greenhouse gas emissions scenario. Results demonstrate that increasingly restrictive land use policy for Flathead County significantly reduces the amount and footprint of future residential development in the WUI. In addition, shifting from the current to a moderately restrictive land use policy for Flathead County significantly reduces wildfire risk for the WUI, but shifting from the current to a highly restrictive land use policy does not significantly reduce wildfire risk in the WUI. Both the methods and results of the study can help land and wildfire managers to better manage future wildfire risk and identify residential areas having potentially high wildfire risk.

Just Blowing Smoke? Residents’ Social Construction of Communication about Wildfire

This study uses social constructionism as a basis for understanding the effectiveness of communication about wildfire risk between agency officials and wildland–urban interface (WUI) residents. Risk communication literature demonstrates a well-documented difference in the way land managers and stakeholders conceptualize risk. This is especially true of fire because management of these hazards have changed so drastically in past decades; fire managers have typically struggled to clearly articulate the current management policy to the public or integrate their specific knowledge in the risk management process. This study contributes to an understanding of how WUI residents construct communication about wildland fire and agency effectiveness in communicating the new era of fire inclusion. Specifically, we explore the personal and professional sources of information residents’ use to understand their fire risk and the subjects they would like more information about. We also explore the continued viability of Smokey Bear, the most enduring symbol of fire management.