Mountain pine beetles and Colorado forests : findings from a re-survey of Colorado community residents

North Central Colorado has experienced an extensive mountain pine beetle outbreak over the last 20 years. We conducted a survey of Colorado residents about their response to forest disturbance by mountain pine beetles in 2007. A survey questionnaire was sent to randomly selected households in Breckenridge, Dillon, Frisco, Granby, Kremmling, Silverthorne, Steamboat Springs, Vail, and Walden, Colorado. In 2018, we did a follow-up mail survey to see how local communities and residents have experienced and reacted to the mountain pine beetle outbreak and the accompanying changes in Colorado forests over time. These reports describe major findings of the 2018 re-survey for the whole study area and for individual study communities.This research was supported by the Decision, Risk and Management Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation (Award #1733990).This research was supported by the Decision, Risk and Management Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation (Award #1733990).Hua Qin, Elizabeth Prentice, Christine Sanders (University of Missouri-Columbia), Hannah Brenkert-Smith, Jamie Vickery (University of Colorado Boulder)Colorado re-survey report (20 pages : illustration) -- Breckenridge community survey report (13 pages : illustration) -- Dillon community survey report (13 pages : illustration) -- Frisco community survey report (13 pages : illustration) -- Granby community survey report (13 pages : illustration) -- Kremmling community survey report (13 pages : illustration) -- Silverthorne community survey report (13 pages : illustration) -- Steamboat Spring community survey report (13 pages : illustration) -- Vait community survey report (13 pages : illustration) -- Walden community survey report (13 pages : illustration

Relevant Recruiting for Online Survey Participation

Administering a survey online has a number of practical benefits including lower costs, reductions in paper use and data entry time, and a faster data collection time period. A significant challenge, however, entails creating and recruiting a relevant sample of respondents with specific characteristics when email lists are unavailable. In this case, we seek to encourage researcher conversation about relevant and effective recruitment strategies by describing the extensive pretesting process we undertook to develop our survey sampling and recruitment strategy for a study of wildfire mitigation behaviors in Western Colorado. Pretesting response rates varied from 3% to 30%, with the inclusion of a US$2 billion in the recruitment envelope yielding the highest response rate. The actual study subsequently used this approach and resulted in a 35% response rate

Interactions between Resident Risk Perceptions and Wildfire Risk Mitigation: Evidence from Simultaneous Equations Modeling

Fire science emphasizes that mitigation actions on residential property, including structural hardening and maintaining defensible space, can reduce the risk of wildfire to a home. Accordingly, a rich body of social science literature investigates the determinants of wildfire risk mitigation behaviors of residents living in fire-prone areas. Here, we investigate relationships among wildfire hazards, residents’ risk perceptions, and conditions associated with mitigation actions using a combination of simulated wildfire conditions, household survey responses, and professionally assessed parcel characteristic data. We estimate a simultaneous model of these data that accounts for potential direct feedbacks between risk perceptions and parcel-level conditions. We also compare the use of self-reported versus assessed parcel-level data for estimating these relationships. Our analysis relies on paired survey and assessment data for approximately 2000 homes in western Colorado. Our simultaneous model demonstrates dual-directional interactions between risk perceptions and conditions associated with mitigation actions, with important implications for inference from simpler approaches. In addition to improving general understanding of decision-making about risk and natural hazards, our findings can support the effectiveness of publicly supported programs intended to encourage mitigation to reduce society’s overall wildfire risk

Cost Shared Wildfire Risk Mitigation in Log Hill Mesa, Colorado: Survey Evidence on Participation and Willingness to Pay

Wildland–urban interface (WUI) homeowners who do not mitigate the wildfire risk on their properties impose a negative externality on society. To reduce the social costs of wildfire and incentivise homeowners to take action, cost sharing programs seek to reduce the barriers that impede wildfire risk mitigation. Using survey data from a WUI community in western Colorado and a two-stage decision framework, we examine residents’ willingness to participate in a cost sharing program for removing vegetation on their properties and the amount they are willing to contribute to the cost of that removal. Wefind that different factors motivate decisions about participation and about how much to pay. Willingness to participate correlates with both financial and non-monetary considerations, including informational barriers and wildfire risk perceptions, but not with concerns about effectiveness or visual impacts. Residents of properties with higher wildfire risk levels are less likely to participate in the cost sharing than those with lower levels of wildfire risk. We find widespread, positive willingness to pay for vegetation removal, with the amount associated negatively with property size and positively with respondent income. These results can inform the development of cost sharing programs to encourage wildfire risk mitigation on private property

Model Documentation for the MiniCAM

The MiniCAM, short for the Mini-Climate Assessment Model, is an integrated assessment model of moderate complexity focused on energy and agriculture sectors. The model produces emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) and other radiatively important substances such as sulfur dioxide. Through incorporation of the simple climate model MAGICC, the consequences of these emissions for climate change and sea-level rise can be examined. The MiniCAM is designed to be fast and flexible

Effects of ceramide analogs on myelinating organ cultures

Analogs of ceramide which inhibit galactocerebrosidase also demyelinate or inhibit myelination in organ cultures of rat cerebellum. The potency of the analogs in culture correlated with their effectiveness as inhibitors of cerebrosidase, but not with their effectiveness as inhibitors of galactosyl transferase. The most effective compound was the decanoyl amide of 3-phenyl-2-amino-1,3-propanediol with erythro-conformation. Stimulators of cerebrosidase also demyelinated cultures. With both groups of compounds, myelin sheats became distorted, then broke into lipid droplets. Axons were preserved, but neurons showed some nuclear changes and granularity. Metabolic studies with the most effective inhibitor showed that glucose incorporation into cerebroside and other alkali-stable lipids was initially depressed compared to proteins and total lipids.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/21824/1/0000225.pd

Behavioral adaptation to climate change in wildfireâ prone forests

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146375/1/wcc553.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146375/2/wcc553_am.pd

How can health care organisations make and justify decisions about risk reduction? Lessons from a cross-industry review and a health care stakeholder consensus development process

Interventions to reduce risk often have an associated cost. In UK industries decisions about risk reduction are made and justified within a shared regulatory framework that requires that risk be reduced as low as reasonably practicable. In health care no such regulatory framework exists, and the practice of making decisions about risk reduction is varied and lacks transparency. Can health care organisations learn from relevant industry experiences about making and justifying risk reduction decisions? This paper presents lessons from a qualitative study undertaken with 21 participants from five industries about how such decisions are made and justified in UK industry. Recommendations were developed based on a consensus development exercise undertaken with 20 health care stakeholders. The paper argues that there is a need in health care to develop a regulatory framework and an agreed process for managing explicitly the trade-off between risk reduction and cost. The framework should include guidance about a health care specific notion of acceptable levels of risk, guidance about standardised risk reduction interventions, it should include regulatory incentives for health care organisations to reduce risk, and it should encourage the adoption of an approach for documenting explicitly an organisation’s risk position

Managing for Political Corporate Social Responsibility: New Challenges and Directions for PCSR 2.0

This article takes stock of the discourse on ‘political CSR’ (PCSR), reconsiders some of its assumptions, and suggests new directions for what we call ‘PCSR 2.0’. We start with a definition of PCSR, focusing on firms’ contribution to public goods. We then discuss historical antecedents to the debate and outline the original economic and political context. The following section explores emerging changes in the institutional context relevant to PCSR and reconsiders some of the assumptions underlying Habermas’ thesis of the postnational constellation. This highlights some neglected issues in previous works on PCSR, including the influence of nationalism and fundamentalism, the role of various types of business organisations, the return of government regulation, the complexity of institutional contexts, the efficiency of private governance, the financialization and digitalization of the economy, and the relevance of managerial sensemaking. Finally, we discuss the contributions to this special issue and relate them to the newly emerging research agenda

Drivers of risk perceptions about the invasive non-native plant Japanese knotweed in domestic gardens

This is the final version of the article. Available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.How people perceive risks posed by invasive non-native plants (INNP) can influence attitudes and consequently likely influence behavioural decisions. Although some drivers of risk perception for INNP have been identified, research has not determined those for INNP in domestic gardens. This is concerning as domestic gardens are where people most commonly encounter INNP, and where impacts can be particularly acute. Using a survey approach, this study determined the drivers of perceptions of risk of INNP in domestic gardens and which risks most concern people. Japanese knotweed Fallopia japonica, in Cornwall, UK, where it is a problematic INNP in domestic gardens, was used as a case study. Possible drivers of risk were chosen a priori based on variables previously found to be important for environmental risks. Participants perceived Japanese knotweed to be less frequent on domestic property in Cornwall if their occupation involved the housing market, if they had not had Japanese knotweed in their own garden, if they did not know of Japanese knotweed within 5 km of their home, or if they were educated to degree level. Participants who thought that the consequences of Japanese knotweed being present on domestic property could be more severe had occupations that involved the housing market, knew of Japanese knotweed within 5 km of their home, or were older. Although concern about the damage Japanese knotweed could do to the structure of a property was reported as the second highest motivation to control it by the majority of participants, the perception of threat from this risk was rated as relatively low. The results of this study have implications for policy, risk communication, and garden management decisions. For example, there is a need for policy that provides support and resources for people to manage INNP in their local area. To reduce the impact and spread of INNP we highlight the need for clear and accurate risk communication within discourse about this issue. The drivers identified in this study could be used to target awareness campaigns to limit the development of over- or under-inflated risk perceptions.This project was funded as part of the Wildlife Research Co-Operative between the University of Exeter and the Animal and Plant Health Agency