Landowner response to wildfire risk: Adaptation, mitigation or doing nothing

Abstract

Wildfire has brought about ecological, economic, and social consequences that engender human responses in many parts of the world. How to respond to wildfire risk is a common challenge across the globe particularly in areas where lands are controlled by many small private owners because effective wildfire prevention and protection require coordinated efforts of neighboring stakeholders. We explore (i) wildfire response strategies adopted by family forestland owners in the southern United States, one of the most important and productive forest regions in the world, through a landowner survey; and (ii) linkages between the responses of these landowners and their characteristics via multinomial logistic regression. We find that landowners used diverse strategies to respond to wildfire risk, with the most popular responses being "doing nothing" and combined adaptation and mitigation, followed by adaptation or mitigation alone. Landowners who had lost properties to wildfire, lived on their forestlands, had a forest management plan, and were better educated were more likely to proactively respond to wildfire risk. Our results indicate the possibility to enhance the effectiveness of collective action of wildfire risk response by private forestland owners and to coordinate wildfire response with forest conservation and certification efforts. These findings shed new light on engaging private landowners in wildfire management in the study region and beyond.

The Impacts of Wildfire Characteristics and Employment on the Adaptive Management Strategies in the Intermountain West

“…The majority of managers interviewed feel the greatest challenges to fire adaptation are human factors, such as budget limitations, bureaucratic inefficiencies and human decision-making, rather than environmental factors, such as climate change and accumulation of excessive fuel loads (Table 9). These human-related challenges are consistent with some of the wildfire risk literature, which calls for more landowner engagement in mitigation and adaptation [47]. Through these interviews, we also found connections to our fire trend analyses.…”

Fostering collective action to reduce wildfire risk across property boundaries in the American West

“…American West?Previous studies that examine this question have focused on family forest owner behavior (e.g. Fischer and Charnley 2012, Ferranto et al 2013, Gan et al 2015, Canadas et al 2016, Fischer et al 2019 and governance (e.g. Schultz et al 2018, Cyphers and Schultz 2019, Kelly et al 2019, Schultz and Moseley 2019.…”

The Knowledge and Value Basis of Private Forest Management in Sweden: Actual Knowledge, Confidence, and Value Priorities

“…Overall, the results verified a positive association between knowledge and forest management behaviors, irrespective of type of knowledge, with one exception: whereas being more knowledgeable about climate adaptation was associated with more frequently implementing adaptation measures (e.g., increasing the share of mixed and broadleaved forest), it was also associated with management inactivity. A less proactive approach to the risk of future damages in forests has been found among less engaged owners (Gan et al 2015 ). However, not implementing certain management measures may also reflect a willingness to rely on the forest’s own ability to adapt through evolutionary processes (i.e., passive adaptation) (Keskitalo et al 2016 ; Hagerman and Pilai 2018 ).…”