The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Forest Service: Insights for Local Job Creation and Equity from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Charnley, Susan; Davis, Emily Jane; Schelhas, John

doi:10.1093/jofore/fvad009

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 26 publications

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“…Similarly, while new funding mechanisms at both US federal and state levels provide funding for communities to develop, revise, and implement CWPPs (Charnley et al 2023), these mechanisms continue to focus on CWPPs in isolation, rather than as part of a cohesive strategy for managing wildfire hazard. An underexplored function of CWPPs is the degree to which these plans can and should contribute to both horizontal and vertical integration of broader resiliency efforts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Matching the scales of planning and environmental risk: an evaluation of Community Wildfire Protection Plans in the western US

Hamilton,

Evers,

Nielsen-Pincus

et al. 2024

Reg Environ Change

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Theory predicts that effective environmental governance requires that the scales of management account for the scales of environmental processes. A good example is community wildfire protection planning. Plan boundaries that are too narrowly defined may miss sources of wildfire risk originating at larger geographic scales whereas boundaries that are too broadly defined dilute resources. Although the concept of scale (mis)matches is widely discussed in literature on risk mitigation as well as environmental governance more generally, rarely has the concept been rigorously quantified. We introduce methods to address this limitation, and we apply our approach to assess scale matching among Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) in the western US. Our approach compares two metrics: (1) the proportion of risk sources encompassed by planning jurisdictions (sensitivity) and (2) the proportion of area in planning jurisdictions in which risk can originate (precision). Using data from 852 CWPPs and a published library of 54 million simulated wildfires, we demonstrate a trade-off between sensitivity and precision. Our analysis reveals that spatial scale match—the product of sensitivity and precision—has an n-shaped relationship with jurisdiction size and is maximal at approximately 500 km2. Bayesian multilevel models further suggest that functional scale match—via neighboring, nested, and overlapping planning jurisdictions—may compensate for low sensitivity. This study provides a rare instance of a quantitative framework to measure scale match in environmental planning and has broad implications for risk mitigation as well as in other environmental governance settings.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Matching the scales of planning and environmental risk: an evaluation of Community Wildfire Protection Plans in the western US

Hamilton,

Evers,

Nielsen-Pincus

et al. 2024

Reg Environ Change

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Climate change mitigation-adaptation relationships in forest management: perspectives from the fire-prone American West

Carter,

vonHedemann,

Schultz

2024

Reg Environ Change

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Institutions That Influence Cross-Boundary Forest Management: Four Cases of Shared Stewardship in Practice

Aldworth,

Schultz

2023

Journal of Forestry

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The USDA Forest Service’s 2018 Shared Stewardship Strategy emphasizes the need to coordinate work with actors across boundaries to increase the pace and scale of land management, particularly as it relates to forest restoration and wildfire mitigation. We researched how the Strategy was being implemented at the project level by conducting forty-four interviews with individuals closely involved with four large-scale cross-boundary hazardous fuels reduction projects. Our objectives were to identify institutions that facilitated and challenged cross-boundary work under the Strategy and document how actors innovated to overcome challenges they encountered. We found that Shared Stewardship had the greatest opportunity to shift the larger forest management paradigm within states that created new institutions specifically to support the Strategy and its objectives. However, numerous institutional challenges such as yearly funding levels and complex bureaucratic requirements, frustrated efforts to increase the pace and scale of management actions under the Strategy. Study Implications: We conducted research on cross-boundary projects that met the intent of the USDA Forest Service’s Shared Stewardship Strategy. We found that the cross-boundary tenets of the Strategy were best supported when states worked together with the federal government to create new institutions that facilitate multijurisdictional work. Our interviewees said that various bureaucratic hurdles remain difficult to navigate, and that they believe annual funding appropriations are not currently enough to support significant increases in the pace and scale of management. Our interviewees said Shared Stewardship supported cross-boundary actions, but more remains to be done to best support multijurisdictional work.

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The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Forest Service: Insights for Local Job Creation and Equity from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Cited by 3 publications

References 26 publications

Matching the scales of planning and environmental risk: an evaluation of Community Wildfire Protection Plans in the western US

Matching the scales of planning and environmental risk: an evaluation of Community Wildfire Protection Plans in the western US

Climate change mitigation-adaptation relationships in forest management: perspectives from the fire-prone American West

Institutions That Influence Cross-Boundary Forest Management: Four Cases of Shared Stewardship in Practice

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