Matching Items (3)
Description
Over the last few decades, the western United States has experienced more extreme wildland fire events, remarkable for their size and severity. The frequency, intensity, and size of wildfires is projected to only increase, with severe consequences for biodiversity, ecosystem services, human property, and more broadly, the sustainability of western forests. These trends are the result of a complex suite of factors including, past land-use policies, fire suppression, climate change, and human development. To protect fire-adapted ecosystems from further damage, fuel reduction and fire reintroduction are required over large landscapes, necessitating government agencies, landowners, and other interests to work together. In response, collaborative fire restoration efforts are forming to carry out this much needed work. This research takes a multi-level approach to understanding these new models for fire management and restoration. Collaborative, landscape-level approaches to fire reintroduction are a direct response to a failure in past policies and approaches, which necessitates a discussion of why these policies allowed fires to grow worse and why management failed to effectively prevent this from happening. Thus, a historical analysis of wildland fire policy and management constitutes one layer in this analysis. Collaborative frameworks to wildland fire reintroduction are few and far between, which obliges a discussion of how collaboration works and why it may be necessary. An in-depth case study of FireScape, a collaborative effort in southeastern Arizona to restore wildfire completes this analysis and provides a discussion of the challenges, benefits, and implications of these new approaches. The context for this case study is southeastern Arizona's Sky Islands. The Sky Islands region spans the U.S. Mexico borderlands and is a biodiversity hotspot, making it an ideal place to explore the interactions between humans and natural systems. The more recent emphasis on collaboration in wildfire management has yet to be fully explored in other academic circles. Collaboration is essential in fire restoration and provides one pathway to solve complex natural resource management issues.
ContributorsRaymondi, Ann Marie (Author) / Hirt, Paul W (Thesis advisor) / York, Abigail (Thesis advisor) / Pyne, Stephen J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Wildfire is an inescapable feature of Canadian landscapes, burning an average of over two million hectares annually and causing significant repercussions for communities, infrastructure, and resources. Because fire is managed provincially, each jurisdiction has developed a distinctive approach to preparing for, responding to, and recovering from fire on its landscapes. Using a comparative study between seven provinces and four national agencies, this dissertation examines differences in institutional design and policy with respect to the knowledge management systems required to respond to wildfire: How do policies and procedures vary between jurisdictions, how do they affect the practices of each fire management agency, and how can they be improved through a critical analysis of the knowledge management systems in use? And, what is the role of and limits on expertise within these fire management institutions that manage high-risk, highly uncertain socio- environmental challenges?
I begin by introducing the 2016 Fort McMurray/Horse River fire as a lens for exploring these questions. I then use the past one hundred years of fire history in Canada to illustrate the continual presence of fire, its human and social dimensions, and the evolution of differing fire management regimes. Drawing on extended ethnographic observation and interviewing of fire managers across Canada, I examine the varied provincial systems of response through following an active fire day in Alberta. I analyze the decision support and geospatial information systems used to guide fire agency decision-making, as well as the factors that limit their effectiveness in both response and hazard reduction modes. I begin Part Two with a discussion of mutual aid arrangements between the provinces, and critically examine the core strategy – interagency fungibility – used to allow this exchange. I analyze forecasting and predictive models used in firefighting, with an emphasis on comparing advantages and disadvantages of attempts at predicting future firefighter capacity requirements. I review organizational learning approaches, considering both fire research strategies and after action reviews. Finally, I consider the implication of changes in climates, politics, and public behaviours and their impacts on fire management.
I begin by introducing the 2016 Fort McMurray/Horse River fire as a lens for exploring these questions. I then use the past one hundred years of fire history in Canada to illustrate the continual presence of fire, its human and social dimensions, and the evolution of differing fire management regimes. Drawing on extended ethnographic observation and interviewing of fire managers across Canada, I examine the varied provincial systems of response through following an active fire day in Alberta. I analyze the decision support and geospatial information systems used to guide fire agency decision-making, as well as the factors that limit their effectiveness in both response and hazard reduction modes. I begin Part Two with a discussion of mutual aid arrangements between the provinces, and critically examine the core strategy – interagency fungibility – used to allow this exchange. I analyze forecasting and predictive models used in firefighting, with an emphasis on comparing advantages and disadvantages of attempts at predicting future firefighter capacity requirements. I review organizational learning approaches, considering both fire research strategies and after action reviews. Finally, I consider the implication of changes in climates, politics, and public behaviours and their impacts on fire management.
ContributorsKennedy, Eric B., 1990- (Author) / Sarewitz, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Clark A. (Committee member) / Pyne, Stephen J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Increasingly, wildfires are threatening communities, forcing evacuations, damaging property, and causing loss of life. This is in part due to a century of wildfire policy and an influx of people moving to the wildland urban interface (WUI). National programs have identified and promoted effective wildfire mitigation actions to reduce wildfire risk; yet, many homeowners do not perform these actions. Based on previous literature and using the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study proposes an integrated wildfire mitigation behavioral model to assess and identify the factors that influence homeowners’ wildfire mitigation behaviors. Specifically, the study tests the validity of the theory of planned behavior as a foundational model in exploring wildfire mitigation behaviors, develops and empirically tests a wildfire mitigation behavioral model, and explores the role of homeowner associations (HOA) on wildfire mitigation behaviors. Structural equation modeling was used on data collected from homeowners with property in the WUI in Prescott, Arizona. Results suggest TPB provides an acceptable model in describing homeowner wildfire mitigation behavior. For HOA residents, attitudes toward wildfire mitigation behaviors play an important role in predicting intentions to perform these behaviors. Additionally, perceived constraints directly influenced actual mitigation actions. For non-HOA residents, subjective norms influenced intentions to mitigate. Implications for research and local wildfire mitigation programs and policy are discussed.
ContributorsSteffey, Eric Clifford (Author) / Budruk, Megha (Thesis advisor) / Vogt, Christine (Committee member) / Virden, Randy (Committee member) / Larson, Kelli (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016