Grappling with wildfire risk across scales: how institutional, social, and cognitive processes shape coupled human-natural systems

Keywords: Wildfires, Western U.S., Hazards, Networks, Environmental Governance, Risk, Planning
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 26

Abstract

Large-scale and uncontrollable “megafires” have become increasingly common in the fire-prone U.S. West, driven in part by changing climatic conditions along with the accumulation of fuels as a result of longstanding fire-suppression policies. Wildfire risk governance is a living laboratory for studying the interplay of social and ecological processes across scales because people—individually and collectively—manage fire-prone forests at multiple spatial scales and because fires themselves often cross administrative boundaries. This presentation will highlight recent work that examines how institutional, social, and cognitive processes interact with environmental processes in fire-prone landscapes, with implications for resilience and the welfare of human and natural communities.