Coupling the Biophysical and Social Dimensions of Wildfire Risk to Improve Wildfire Mitigation Planning

Abstract

We describe recent advances in biophysical and social aspects of risk and their potential combined contribution to improve mitigation planning on fire-prone landscapes. The methods and tools provide an improved method for defining the spatial extent of wildfire risk to communities compared to current planning processes. They also propose an expanded role for social science to improve understanding of community-wide risk perceptions and to predict property owners' capacities and willingness to mitigate risk by treating hazardous fuels and reducing the susceptibility of dwellings. In particular, we identify spatial scale mismatches in wildfire mitigation planning and their potential adverse impact on risk mitigation goals. Studies in other fire-prone regions suggest that these scale mismatches are widespread and contribute to continued wildfire dwelling losses. We discuss how risk perceptions and behavior contribute to scale mismatches and how they can be minimized through integrated analyses of landscape wildfire transmission and social factors that describe the potential for collaboration among landowners and land management agencies. These concepts are then used to outline an integrated socioecological planning framework to identify optimal strategies for local community risk mitigation and improve landscape-scale prioritization of fuel management investments by government entities.

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

“…al., unpublished manuscript). It also provides an empirical application and example of the conceptual framework outlined by Ager et al (2015) for incorporating socioeconomic data and analysis into biophysical assessment of wildfire risk and mitigation opportunities at the fireshed scale.…”

“…In particular, building on work by Champ et al (2013), our empirical models demonstrate the influence that biophysical landscape characteristics play in shaping homeowners' wildfire risk perceptions and motivating them to take mitigation actions. This can be useful in a fire management context by enabling landscape Ecology and Society 22(1): 21 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss1/art21/ managers to identify places where landowners and homeowners are most likely to conduct mitigation actions and where they may need greater incentives (Ager et al 2015). More broadly, social science information, such as we have developed here, can play a role in landscape-level mitigation planning and implementation efforts.…”

Re-envisioning community-wildfire relations in the U.S. West as adaptive governance

“…To date relatively little explicit attention has been paid to scale matching within the disaster and fire resilience literatures (see Baker and Refsgaard 2007, Birkmann and von Teichman 2010, and Ager et al 2015 for exceptions). However, these concerns are clearly germane to questions of wildfire management.…”

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

“…Fire-prone landscapes feature several CHANS characteristics (Liu et al 2007, Fischer et al 2016a, including complexity, feedbacks lagged in time and space, and heterogeneity in the ways that different actors contribute to and mitigate wildfire risk (Ager et al 2015). Wildfire risk, we assume, includes both the likelihood of wildfire and the likelihood of damage (e.g., Brenkert-Smith et al 2006).…”