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

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113114/1/risa12373.pd

Social and Cultural Influences on Management for Carbon Sequestration on US Family Forestlands: A Literature Synthesis

Nonindustrial private-or "family"-forests hold great potential for sequestering carbon and have received much attention in discussions about forestry-based climate change mitigation. However, little is known about social and cultural influences on owners' willingness to manage for carbon and respond to policies designed to encourage carbon-oriented management. We review the published literature to examine how family forest owners' values, ecological knowledge, risk perceptions, and forest management and policy preferences may affect their interest in managing for carbon sequestration. We find that although family forest owners may not be particularly motivated to mitigate climate change, their forest management values and practices compliment many carbon-oriented management strategies. However, the strong value owners place on privacy and autonomy, and the weak importance many place on financial reward, may inhibit participation in policies and programs that incentivize carbonoriented management. These findings also have implications for policy efforts to encourage management for other ecological values besides carbon sequestration on family forestlands

Voter Identification Requirements: Background and Legal Issues

Since 2008, more than 30 states have enacted laws relating to voter identification, with several containing photo ID requirements. Several states enacted voter identification laws that have either been struck down by courts or are not yet in effect. A number of bills with voter identification provisions have been introduced in the 113th Congress and one (S. 1945) has received committee consideration. This report examines this type of legislation and the legal issues regarding it

Photo ID Requirements for Voting: Background and Legal Issues

Report concerning the controversy surrounding some states' requirements that voters provide photographic identification before casting a ballot

Community Forestry Research Fellowship: Ten Year Assessment and Future Prospects

Prepared for the 7th Biennial Conference on University Education in Natural Resources. March 13 -15, 2008, Oregon State University.The Community Forestry Research Fellowship was founded in 1996 with the aim of “building the field of community forestry” as a legitimate field of academic inquiry. The Ford Foundation financed this new program to provide opportunities for universities and graduate students to engage in applied, participatory research in community forestry in the United States. The program’s strategy was to provide funding directly to graduate students, who would in turn identify and involve community partners and university faculty in research meaningful to all. Over the ten years that the program has been in existence it has supported 78 fellows from 25 institutions in research conducted in 26 states. Some communities have been involved with numerous students, leading to sustained interaction with the program. The program has evolved with respect to program structure, scope, and strategy. A major effort has been made to diversify the student population with respect to racial, ethnic, and cultural background, including development of an undergraduate program serving Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Moreover, program focus has broadened to address natural resource issues in both rural and urban settings. Having recently completed a ten year external assessment, the program is now undergoing intensive discussion of goals, objectives and strategies. The program is exploring ways to facilitate long-term university-community partnerships in order to build community capacity and resilience. It also aspires to improve understanding within the academy of the complexities of rural community development and natural resource management. This paper describes the program, shares results of the ten year assessment, and considers the program’s future prospects. It discusses more generally the challenges of program development and maintenance, securing funding, and dealing with the shifting priorities of funders

Objective and perceived wildfire risk and its influence on private forest landowners’ fuel reduction activities in Oregon’s (USA) ponderosa pine ecoregion

Policymakers seek ways to encourage fuel reduction among private forest landowners to augment similar efforts on federal and state lands. Motivating landowners to contribute to landscape-level wildfire protection requires an understanding of factors that underlie landowner behaviour regarding wildfire. We developed a conceptual framework describing landowners’ propensity to conduct fuel reduction as a function of objective and subjective factors relating to wildfire risk. We tested our conceptual framework using probit analysis of empirical data from a survey of non-industrial private forest landowners in the ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) region of eastern Oregon (USA). Our empirical results confirm the conceptual framework and suggest that landowners’ perceptions of wildfire risk and propensity to conduct fuel treatments are correlated with hazardous fuel conditions on or near their parcels, whether they have housing or timber assets at risk, and their past experience with wildfire, financial capacity for conducting treatments and membership in forestry and fire protection organisations. Our results suggest that policies that increase awareness of hazardous fuel conditions on their property and potential for losses in residential and timber assets, and that enhance social networks through which awareness and risk perception are formed, could help to encourage fuel reduction among private forest landowners.Keywords: wildland–urban interface, landscape models, non-industrial private forest landowners, wildfire risk, fuel treatment

Numerical Methods for the QCD Overlap Operator: I. Sign-Function and Error Bounds

The numerical and computational aspects of the overlap formalism in lattice quantum chromodynamics are extremely demanding due to a matrix-vector product that involves the sign function of the hermitian Wilson matrix. In this paper we investigate several methods to compute the product of the matrix sign-function with a vector, in particular Lanczos based methods and partial fraction expansion methods. Our goal is two-fold: we give realistic comparisons between known methods together with novel approaches and we present error bounds which allow to guarantee a given accuracy when terminating the Lanczos method and the multishift-CG solver, applied within the partial fraction expansion methods.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figure

Categorizing the Social Context of the Wildland Urban Interface: Adaptive Capacity for Wildfire and Community "Archetypes"

Understanding the local context that shapes collective response to wildfire risk continues to be a challenge for scientists and policymakers. This study utilizes and expands on a conceptual approach for understanding adaptive capacity to wildfire in a comparison of 18 past case studies. The intent is to determine whether comparison of local social context and community characteristics across cases can identify community “archetypes” that approach wildfire planning and mitigation in consistently different ways. Identification of community archetypes serves as a potential strategy for collaborating with diverse populations at risk from wildfire and designing tailored messages related to wildfire risk mitigation. Our analysis uncovered four consistent community archetypes that differ in terms of the local social context and community characteristics that continue to influence response to wildfire risk. Differences among community archetypes include local communication networks, reasons for place attachment or community identity, distrust of government, and actions undertaken to address issues of forest health and esthetics. Results indicate that the methodological approach advanced in this study can be used to draw more consistent lessons across case studies and provide the means to test different communication strategies among archetypes.Keywords: social diversity, hazards, wildland urban interface, wildland fire, adaptive capacit

Does the Social Capital in Networks of ‘‘Fish and Fire’’ Scientists and Managers Suggest Learning?

Patterns of social interaction influence how knowledge is generated, communicated, and applied. Theories of social capital and organizational learning suggest that interactions within disciplinary or functional groups foster communication of knowledge, whereas interactions across groups foster generation of new knowledge. We used social network analysis to examine patterns of social interaction reported in survey data from scientists and managers who work on fish and fire issues. We found that few fish and fire scientists and managers interact with one another, suggesting low bridging social capital and thus, limited opportunity for generation of new knowledge. We also found that although interaction occurs among scientists—suggesting modest bonding social capital—few managers interact with other managers, indicating limited opportunity for communication of scientific knowledge for the purposes of application. We discuss constraints and opportunities for organizational learning evident in these patterns of social interaction among fish and fire scientists and managers.Keywords: riparian and aquatic issues, natural resource agencies, organizational learning, social network analysis, wildland fire, social capita

Wildfire Risk as a Socioecological Pathology

Wildfire risk in temperate forests has become a nearly intractable problem that can be characterized as a socioecological “pathology”: that is, a set of complex and problematic interactions among social and ecological systems across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Assessments of wildfire risk could benefit from recognizing and accounting for these interactions in terms of socioecological systems, also known as coupled natural and human systems (CNHS). We characterize the primary social and ecological dimensions of the wildfire risk pathology, paying particular attention to the governance system around wildfire risk, and suggest strategies to mitigate the pathology through innovative planning approaches, analytical tools, and policies. We caution that even with a clear understanding of the problem and possible solutions, the system by which human actors govern fire-prone forests may evolve incrementally in imperfect ways and can be expected to resist change even as we learn better ways to manage CNHS