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Understanding Communities at the Wildland/Urban Interface: Human Dimensions of Adaptive Management and Effectiveness Monitoring in the Forest Service, Regions 1 and 4
Daniel R. Williams, U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins, CO
Cindy Swanson, U.S. Forest Service, Northern Region, Missoula, MT
July 12, 2001
Problem Description and Information Needs:
Fire management and suppression policies over the past 20 years have evolved in response to greater understanding of the ecological role of fire and the impact of fire suppression on ecosystems and human communities. At the same time, however, residential development and other human activities have increased in and around forest areas, exacerbating the risk to property and human well-being and narrowing fire management options. The success of any effort to prevent catastrophic fires or restore and rehabilitate forest ecosystems depends on public understanding, acceptance, and cooperation.
The problem, however, goes beyond merely enhancing public understanding of fire. The challenge of living with wildland fire requires careful and close coordination of agency fire and vegetation management efforts with local communities and non-federal landowners as well as programs to strengthen community institutions and organizations to manage fire risk and respond to the impacts of eventual fires. Yet we have very little systematic knowledge of the social and institutional factors that influence individual, community, and institutional capacities to understand and manage fire risk, minimize fire impacts, and respond effectively to wildland fires when they do occur. In order for Regions 1 and 4 to implement their fire plans, information is needed on understanding fire management at individual and community scales. Specifically, information is needed on:
- How individuals and communities understand and respond to fire risk, the ecological role of fire, ecosystem rehabilitation, fuel management, and existing and emerging fire management strategies
- Community infrastructure and economic characteristics to understand cost and benefits of structure protection, the effects of fire on economic sectors of the community, and the cost and benefits of fire suppression
- The design of recovery and rehabilitation efforts of forests and communities that engage and strengthen the economic and social capacities of community organizations, businesses, and governments to effectively live in and with fire-dependent ecosystems and to contribute to effective fire management
- How to communicate knowledge about fire management to communities at the wildland/urban interface
Adaptive Management/Monitoring Strategy:
In an effort to guide adaptive management and provide the necessary information to monitor the long-term effectiveness of fire management efforts, this proposal recommends a coordinated case-study approach to understanding how social systems are affected by wildland fire and related fire recovery and ecological restoration efforts. The strategy involves selecting a range of fire-impacted communities and communities with a substantial risk of fire, designing a monitoring and assessment strategy, and learning from comparisons among communities regarding the effects of fire and the critical areas of knowledge and information needed to better design future management and mitigation efforts. Somewhat like an experimental watershed, a key advantage of conducting a long-term comprehensive assessment and monitoring program on a few representative forest-proximate communities is to provide integrated understanding of the social dimensions of the wildfire/community interface. In addition, by establishing a comprehensive information baseline, these case study areas become attractive and effective research sites for additional studies funded from other sources as well as a model for application of adaptive management and effectiveness monitoring in other locations.
Study Design:
The basic approach is to employ a multi-institutional and interdisciplinary research team to design and conduct the adaptive management and effectiveness monitoring effort. The overall research effort is to be managed and coordinated by two lead investigators structured in two cooperative or other appropriate financial agreements. Steve McCool, University of Montana, will serve as team leader for Phase II and Phase IIIB. Matt Carroll, Washington State University, will serve as team leader for Phase IIIA. Various other team members will play consulting and/or contributing roles as suggested, but not limited to roles identified below (via consultantships, subcontracts, and/or other financial agreements tied to one or more of the lead agreements). Lead investigators may employ additional consultants and subcontractors as they deem necessary.
Phase 1: May 15 - June 30, 2001
This phase was initiated to develop a common human dimensions data collection and monitoring protocol that will guide:
- The design and implementation of adaptive vegetation management and post-fire recovery/restoration efforts by the Forest Service that reflect a sound understanding of the effects of wildland fires on people.
- Long-term monitoring of the effectiveness of adaptive management and recovery efforts.
Protocol design was developed based on input from an interdisciplinary team of seven social scientists from research institutions in the Northern Rockies and Forest Service staff from Region 1 at the Rocky Mountain Research Station.
The proposed protocol addresses four major content areas identified by the R1/R4 Steering Committee:
- Public understanding of wildfire, rehabilitation, and fuels treatment
- Community and individual responses to the wildfire, rehabilitation, and fuel treatment
- Effectiveness of ongoing education and recovery/rehabilitation/fuels treatment efforts
- Assessment of the community infrastructure, employment profiles, and other variables related to community resiliency.
The protocol provides for comparisons both across study sites and over time (up to four years out) to evaluate the effectiveness of management activities. It employs multiple disciplines and methods (surveys, interviews, census and other secondary data) to study the individual and community contexts of fire recovery and rehabilitation, including economic conditions, landowner/community resident practices and attitudes, and local government practices and policies. The team proposed several criteria for the selection of four to six communities for application of the protocol. The primary criteria are to select communities based on their representativeness of communities that were directly and indirectly affected by the 2000 fires in the two regions and their potential for generating insights through cross-community comparisons. More specific criteria were suggested including fire regime, migration rates, values at risk, population size, community-resource connection (commodity versus amenity), stage in the fire recovery (pre versus post), and partnership potential with the national forest.
Cost: $16,000 for Design Workshop to pay for travel and consultation.
Phase II: Design Phase July 1, 2001 - March 31, 2002
Objectives for this phase are to develop and refine the monitoring template and plan of work to accomplish the following:
- Examine residential interface communities across the two regions (including communities directly affected by the 2000 wildfires and communities indirectly affected and/or at high risk of future fires)
- Conduct multiple community case studies using similar procedures and instruments
- Conduct longitudinal analyses of communities over time (4-5 years)
- Sample communities for
- social effects of wildfire
- recovery preferences for both forest and human community assets (i.e., preferences for restoring what people care about)
- social economic effects of recovery efforts
Projected Budget: $60,000
This phase will involve the entire research team. Team members would be expected to provide inputs as identified below and travel to relevant project coordination meetings and activities.
Prime Contractor: Steve McCool, University of Montana
Consultants and Contributors: Burchfield, Carroll, Daniels, Harris, Krannich, and Loomis
Primary Products:
- Synthesis of literature, problem analysis, and conceptual framework
- Annotated bibliography covering human dimensions of fire and other natural hazards
- Study plan to guide Phase III, which describes a pilot community assessment protocol (monitoring template) for conducting baseline studies of adaptive management and effectiveness monitoring of community fire recovery efforts.
Tasks:
- Refine Conceptual Framework. Provide roadmap of assessment and identify which pieces will be addressed and not addressed by this project. This step will also provide the rationale for the approach and the relevance of the information for adaptive management and effectiveness monitoring. (Daniels Leads; Carroll, McCool consult)
- Literature Reviews:
- Natural hazards research. A review and synthesis of human dimensions of natural hazard/disaster research will be conducted and integrated with human dimensions of fire literature. (Post-doc/graduate student works with the Natural Hazards Research Center, University of Colorado)
- Amenities and Rural Communities (Krannich)
- Review and analysis of Bitteroot National Forest Social research (Burchfield, Manning)
- Human dimensions of Ecological Restoration (Harris)
- Fire economics research (Loomis)
- Synthesis of literature (McCool leads; team members consult)
- 2001 Reconnaissance/pilot study of one community, probably Salmon, Idaho in September or October (Carroll leads; Selected consultants may participate as necessary)
- Household Finance/budget and economic profile pilot -- updating and ground truth (Daniels leads)
- Plan of Work. Synthesis of 1-4 above; provide description of tasks for implementation phase; identify case study sites and partnership agreements with case study national forests, program of field work (McCool leads; Carroll and Loomis serve as lead consultants)
Phase III: Community Case Studies -- April 1, 2002 - December 31, 2003
This phase will involve development of detailed multidisciplinary case studies of specific communities and geographic areas that would constitute a baseline for additional data collection in later years. Case studies would describe social effects of the wildland fires and their distributive/equity dimensions (See Appendix - Social Effects Matrix) with respect to:
- demographic and economic profiles of communities
- health and safety
- household financial changes and property damage
- community capacity
- social-psychological impacts
- attitude/behavioral changes
- community preferences for rehabilitation and recovery and preferred means for implementation.
Initial assessments may involve selecting case studies of both fire-prone communities and fire-impacted communities. Comparisons of case studies would attempt to identify the factors that influence different community and institutional responses to fire and fire risk and the acceptability and desirability of alternative fire risk management and recovery strategies. This information would provide inventories of different community needs and facilitate the design and delivery of outreach, education, and other support for local communities to help reduce fire hazards in and near their communities. This phase will involve the following tasks:
- Qualitative interviewing of key informants (35-40 per community) and rapid appraisal techniques addressing household financial changes, community capacity, social-psychological impacts, attitude/behavioral change, and community and forest value recovery priorities. This phase would emphasize identification of themes/issues and sources and character of key social differences/stratifications (Carroll leads, Burchfield, Krannich consult).
- Secondary data collection and analysis addressing demographic/economic profiles and health, safety and property changes and impacts (McCool leads; Moisey, Harris consult)
- Survey of community residents covering social psychological aspects of fire (beliefs, risk perceptions, trust, attributions of causality), environmental and community attitudes, and forest and community recovery preferences (McCool, Loomis, Carroll lead; Krannich consults)
- Synthesis and reporting of results (McCool, Carroll, Loomis lead; team members contribute as needed)
- Design evaluation and recommendations (McCool, Carroll, Loomis lead; team members contribute as needed)
- Design team review and assessment (consultant and contractor travel to any meetings for this step to be covered out of RMRS coordination/follow-up budget).
Data collection and analyses will be organized into two agreements:
- Prime Contractor: Part A (Tasks 1, 4, 5, and 6) Matt Carroll, Washington State University.
- Qualitative Community Assessment of Fire Impacts and Recovery
Anticipated Budget: $200,000
Prime Contractor: Part B (Tasks 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) Steve McCool, University of Montana.
Community Socio-economic Profiles and Quantitative Study of Community Perceptions of Wildland Fire Impacts and Recovery
Anticipated Budget: $110,000
Phase IV: Effectiveness Monitoring - June 1, 2003 - May 31, 2005
Funding to be identified
In years 3-5 follow-up studies would be conducted on fire-impacted communities and fire-prone communities that later experience fire so as to allow before and after comparisons of single communities as well as cross-comparisons among communities. The aim is to examine the social outcomes of recovery efforts in terms of effectiveness in meeting objectives as well as unintended consequences.
Project Coordination: $30,000 July 1, 2001 - December 31, 2003
Total Project Budget: | Phase I (completed) | $16,000 | | Phase II: | 60,000 | | Phase III:
Part A - Tasks 1, 4, 5, 6 | 200,000 | | Part B - Tasks 2, 3, 4, 5,6 | 110,000 | | RMRS:
Coordination/follow-up | 39,000 | | Total Project: | $425,000 | |
Appendix: Social Effects Matrix
This is a preliminary list of categories and examples of social effects. These and any other domains identified in the social assessment will be examined in terms of two additional dimensions. One is a temporal context, addressing influences of and changes across pre-fire, during fire, and post-fire phases. The second is the distribution and social differentiations within communities for given parameters and their formative/causal origins.
Social Effect Domains:
- Social/demographic/economic community profile/dynamics
- Health/Safety/Property
- Financial Dimensions: Income/employment change, wealth change (property values, business values, etc.), informal economy
- Community Capacity Dimensions: Institutional response, social capital, community action/resource mobilization)
- Social-psychological Dimensions: Fear/risk perception, causal attribution, stress-distress, distrust/hostility/alienation
- Attitude/Behavioral dimensions: awareness/knowledge of fire/fire effects, efficacy, change in attachment/use of forests, change in risk reduction actions, acceptance of responsibility
- Social/Forest Value Recovery
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