Perceptions of Wildfire and Landscape Change in the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska

Abstract

Despite a broad literature addressing the human dimensions of wildfire, current approaches often compartmentalize results according to disciplinary boundaries. Further, relatively few studies have focused on the public's evolving perceptions of wildfire as communities change over time. This paper responds to these gaps by exploring perceptions of landscape dynamics and wildfire between 2003 and 2007 using a typological framework of intersecting ecological, social, and cultural processes. Designed as a restudy, and using key informant interviews, this research allowed us to observe risk perception as they are related to community challenges and opportunities in the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. Risk perceptions were examined as an integral part of community and landscape change. Wildfire was a concern among informants in 2003 and remained a concern in 2007, although informants were less likely to discuss it as a major threat compared to the original study. Informants in the western part of the peninsula tended to express more concern about wildfire than their eastern counterparts largely due to their experiences with recent fires. Other important factors residents considered included changing forest fuels, the expanding wildland urban interface, and contrasting values of new residents. Underscoring the localized nature of risk perceptions, informants had difficulty describing the probability of a wildfire event in a geographical context broader than the community scale. This paper demonstrates how a holistic approach can help wildfire and natural resource professionals, community members, and other stakeholders understand the social and physical complexities influencing collective actions or inactions to address the threat of wildfire.

Community Wildfire Preparedness: a Global State-of-the-Knowledge Summary of Social Science Research

“…Although place attachment was not identified as an important theme in the prior synthesis, there is increasing evidence that it may be important across a range of dynamics [14,33,49,51,95]. For example, a study of six different US communities found that place attachment was the most significant predictor of social capital and that individuals with higher social capital scores were doing more to prepare their property for wildfire [5].…”

“…Building on this finding, recent research has found that whether or not local knowledge and context have been taken into consideration can influence the effectiveness of outreach programs, views of fire management efforts, and how people interpret and act on information. Because risk perception related to wildfire can be quite localized [95], information efforts that take local context into account are likely to be more trusted and more relevant to individuals [28,89]. For example, in Australia, Reid and Belin [27] found that during a 2010 fire, few people followed the advice of a new post-Black Saturday extreme fire warning to leave early because they believed the advice was more applicable to people outside their area.…”

Exploring the Influence of Local Social Context on Strategies for Achieving Fire Adapted Communities

“…Participants across every location studied for this research quickly acknowledged in their own words that any adaptation strategy would need to include a better understanding of the local social context that continues to define wildfire conditions. Common factors of local social context mentioned by respondents and which varied across locations reflect existing understandings found in wildfire social science literature, including local community members': (1) values for the landscape; (2) understandings and perceived responsibility for fire management; (3) relationships with other community members; (4) interactions with partner agencies or neighboring populations; and (5) changing demographic patterns, including amenity migration or absentee landowners (see [17,18,58,63]).…”

“…As a result, those populations may differ in their ability and willingness to enact adaptation strategies that perpetuate or change the places where they live (see [3,27,29,62]). Fire-prone populations also can be characterized by dynamic change in their social, economic, or cultural makeup due to amenity migration, out-migration, and changes in the predominant uses of natural resources (e.g., transition from tree farms to recreational properties, or from subdivided parcels to conservation areas) (see [25,[63][64][65]). Our efforts in this manuscript seek to extend existing research outlining how variable and dynamic conditions of local contexts may lead to differential support for wildfire adaptation strategies across locations.…”

Foraging for identity: the relationships between landscape activities and landscape identity after catastrophic landscape change

“…It is the discussions developed through such works that our present study engages. Numerous researchers have observed that such events have a negative impact on place identity leading to emotions of grief, and the loss of sense of place among locals (Eisenman et al, 2015;Gordon, Gruver, Flint, & Luloff, 2013;Hamin & Ryan, 2008;Oliver-Smith, 1996). This has been referred to as Solastalgia; when the landscape is stripped of its capacity to provide solace (Albrecht et al, 2007;Eisenman et al, 2015).…”