Keys to Success for Watershed Management Organizations

13 p.This paper was developed as a product of a graduate class on watershed management policy and planning in Oregon taught by Dr. Nielsen-Pincus in the Summer 2009 through the Department of Planning, Public Policy, and Management at the University of Orego

The Eugene Water and Electric Board’s McKenzie River payment for watershed services program: Research findings on ratepayers, landowners, and local stakeholders

This presentation focuses on the following research objectives: How much are ratepayers willing to pay and what effects that willingness? How much do landowners need to receive and what affects their interest

Job Growth and Loss Across Sectors and Time in the Western US: The Impact of Large Wildfires

The link between economic growth and natural hazards has long been studied to better understand the effects of natural hazards on local, regional, and country level growth patterns. However, relatively little generalizable research has focused on wildfires, one of the most common forest disturbances in the western United States (US). We examined the effect of large wildfires on employment growth across sectors and time in the western US.We matched wildfire occurrences from 2004 to 2008 and their duration with monthly employment data to identify the effect of wildfire on employment growth. Wildfires generally tended to exhibit positive effects on employment during the periods that suppression efforts were active. However, the overall positive effect maskswinners and losers across sectors — such as natural resources and mining and leisure and hospitality, respectively. The overall positive effect then transitioned to a negative drag on local employment growth for a period of up to two years following the wildfire. We explore reasons why some sectors win while others lose and explanations for the lingering effects of a large wildfire on the economy as a whole

Impacts of the biomass producer or collector tax credit on Oregon's wood fuels market and economy

32 pagesOregon’s Biomass Producer or Collector (BPC) Tax Credit encourages the production, collection, and transportation of biomass for biofuel production. It helps offset the transportation costs for biomass producers and collectors for a variety of bioenergy feed stocks by paying a set rate per unit of material delivered to a qualified bioenergy facility. This report is intended to help evaluate the effects of the tax credit on the Oregon’s wood fuel market and Oregon’s economy more broadly.This working paper was completed in response to a request from the Oregon Department of Energy. We thank John Pine and Andrew Herstrom with the Oregon Department of Forestry, and Gail Krumenauer with the State of Oregon Employment Department for their support through this project

Woody biomass utilization trends, barriers, and strategies : a survey of USDA Forest Service managers

16 pagesPublic and private forest managers, renewable energy advocates, and community leaders across the United States are increasingly in- terested in woody biomass for its potential to increase energy independence, mitigate climate change, off-set the costs of hazardous fuels and forest restoration projects, and create opportunities for community-economic development. Woody biomass derived from logging, fuels treatments, and forest products manufacturing can be utilized for heat and electrical energy as well as value-added wood products, although much of the current policy discussion in the United States around biomass has focused on using minimal value biomass for energy purposes.This study was made possible with funding from the USDA Forest Service’s Northern Research Station and the Ford Foundation

Matching the Scales of Planning and Environmental Risk: an Evaluation of Community Wildfire Protection Plans in the Western US

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

Quick guide to monitoring economic impacts of ecosystem restoration and stewardship

16 pagesThis guide will help you develop an economic monitoring program by setting goals, selecting monitoring measures, collecting data, and reporting and using monitoring results. Specifically, it describes how to obtain and utilize detailed information about job numbers, job quality, wages, contracting and subcontracting opportunities, and other related economic impacts of restoration.This quick guide was made possible with funding from the Meyer Fund for a Sustainable Environment

Archetypes of Community Wildfire Exposure from National Forests of the Western US

Risk management typologies and their resulting archetypes can structure the many social and biophysical drivers of community wildfire risk into a set number of strategies to build community resilience. Existing typologies omit key factors that determine the scale and mechanism by which exposure from large wildfires occur. These factors are particularly important for land managing agencies like the US Forest Service, which must weigh community wildfire exposure against other management priorities. We analyze community wildfire exposure from national forests by associating conditions that affect exposure in the areas where wildfires ignite to conditions where exposure likely occurs. Linking source and exposure areas defines the scale at which crossboundary exposure from large wildfires occurs and the scale at which mitigation actions need to be planned. We find that the vast majority of wildfire exposure from national forests is concentrated among a fraction of communities that are geographically clustered in discrete pockets. Among these communities, exposure varies primarily based on development patterns and vegetation gradients and secondarily based on social and ecological management constraints. We describe five community exposure archetypes along with their associated risk mitigation strategies. Only some archetypes have conditions that support hazardous fuels programs. Others have conditions where managing community exposure through vegetation management is unlikely to suffice. These archetypes reflect the diversity of development patterns, vegetation types, associated fuels, and management constraints that exist in the western US and provide a framework to guide public investments that improve management of wildfire risk within threatened communities and on the public lands that transmit fires to them

The social geography of southern Wyoming : important places, development, and natural resource management

16 pagesIn Wyoming, we know where to find natural resources. We can follow pronghorns, elk and deer on their seasonal migrations. But we have not had the same information about which places people care about and why. We created social maps for 3 counties and describe that process in this report. People agreed on important places and where development should occur. . . . We surveyed residents of Albany, Carbon, and Sweetwater counties in 2010. Most participants reported that fish and wildlife habitat, availability of water, and open spaces and scenic views are extremely or very important to them

Social Vulnerability to Large Wildfires in the Western USA

Federal land managers in the US can be informed with quantitative assessments of the social conditions of the populations affected by wildfires originating on their administered lands in order to incorporate and adapt their management strategy to achieve a more targeted prioritization of community wildfire protection investments. In addition, these assessments are valuable to socially vulnerable communities for quantifying their exposure to wildfires originating on adjacent land tenures. We assessed fire transmission patterns using fire behavior simulations to understand spatial variations across three diverse study areas (North-central Washington; Central California; and Northern New Mexico) to understand how different land tenures affect highly socially vulnerable populated places. Transboundary wildfire structure exposure was related to populations with limited adaptive capacity to absorb, recover and modify exposure to wildfires, estimated with the Social Vulnerability Index using US Census unit data (block groups). We found geographic heterogeneity in terms of land tenure composition and estimated fire exposure. Although high social vulnerability block groups covered small areas, they had high population and structure density and were disproportionately exposed per area burned by fire. Structure exposure originated primarily from three key land tenures (wildland-urban interface, private lands and national forests). Federal lands proportionately exposed, on an area basis, populated places with high social vulnerability, with fires ignited on Forest Service administered lands mostly affecting north-central Washington and northern New Mexico communities