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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.

Conserving forests to provide ecosystem services and biodiversity will be a key environmental challenge as society strives to adapt to climate change. The ecosystem services and biodiversity that forests provide will be influenced by the behaviors of numerous individual private landowners as they alter their use of forests in response to climate change and any future carbon pricing policies that emerge. We evaluated the impact of forest landowners' likely adaptation behaviors on potential habitat for 35 terrestrial, forest-dependent vertebrates across three U.S. Pacific states. In particular, we couple a previously estimated empirical-economic model of forest management with spatially explicit species' range and habitat associations to quantify the effects of adaptation to climate change and carbon pricing on potential habitat for our focal species (amphibians, birds and mammals) drawn from state agency lists of species of conservation concern. We show that both climate change and carbon pricing policies would likely encourage adaptation away from currently prevalent coniferous forest types, such as Douglas-fir, largely through harvest and planting decisions. This would reduce potential habitat for a majority of the focal species we studied across all three vertebrate taxa. The total anticipated habitat loss for amphibians, birds and mammals considered species of state concern would exceed total habitat gained, and the net loss in habitat per decade would accelerate over time. Carbon payments to forest landowners likely would lead to unintended localized habitat losses especially in Douglas-fir dominant forest types, and encourage more hardwoods on private forest lands. Our study highlights potential tradeoffs that could arise from pricing one ecosystem service (e.g., carbon) while leaving others (e.g., wildlife habitat) unpriced. Our study demonstrates the importance of anticipating potential changes in ecosystem services and biodiversity resulting from forest landowners' climate adaptation behavior and accounting for a broader set of environmental benefits and costs when designing policies to address climate change.

Quantitative wildfire risk assessments increasingly are used to prioritize areas for investments in wildfire risk mitigation actions. However, current assessments of wildfire risk derived from fire models built primarily on biophysical data do not account for socioeconomic contexts that influence community vulnerability to wildfire. Research indicates that despite accounting for only a small proportion of high wildfire hazard areas, communities with fewer socioeconomic resources to devote to wildfire prevention and response may experience outsized exposure and impacts. We examined the distribution of simulated wildfire risk versus observed wildfire experience relative to social vulnerability across communities in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Using three decades of wildfire occurrence data, we investigated whether socially vulnerable communities were more likely to experience ignitions, fires that escaped initial attack (hereafter ‘escaped fires’) (>121 hectares), and large fires (>404 hectares), reasoning that each may reveal key insights into the effectiveness of current wildfire risk mitigation and response efforts. We found that communities located in areas with higher wildfire risk or hazard tended to have lower social vulnerability, but that across landscapes east of the Cascade Range, communities with higher social vulnerability were more likely to be exposed to ignitions, escaped fires, and large fires. Our results draw into question whether the current reliance on biophysical data in wildfire risk assessments, absent consideration of community socioeconomic conditions, may perpetuate social inequities by leading to over-investment in well-resourced communities and under-investment in socially vulnerable communities subject to disproportionate wildfire exposure.

Fire-prone landscapes are not well studied as coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) and present many challenges for understanding and promoting adaptive behaviors and institutions. Here, we explore how heterogeneity, feedbacks, and external drivers in this type of natural hazard system can lead to complexity and can limit the development of more adaptive approaches to policy and management. Institutions and social networks can counter these limitations and promote adaptation. We also develop a conceptual model that includes a robust characterization of social subsystems for a fire-prone landscape in Oregon and describe how we are building an agent-based model to promote understanding of this social-ecological system. Our agent-based model, which incorporates existing ecological models of vegetation and fire and is based on empirical studies of landowner decision-making, will be used to explore alternative management and fire scenarios with land managers and various public entities. We expect that the development of CHANS frameworks and the application of a simulation model in a collaborative setting will facilitate the development of more effective policies and practices for fire-prone landscapes.

Fire-prone landscapes present many challenges for both managers and policy makers in developing adaptive behaviors and institutions. We used a coupled human and natural systems framework and an agent-based landscape model to examine how alternative management scenarios affect fire and ecosystem services metrics in a fire-prone multiownership landscape in the eastern Cascades of Oregon. Our model incorporated existing models of vegetation succession and fire spread and information from original empirical studies of landowner decision making. Our findings indicate that alternative management strategies can have variable effects on landscape outcomes over 50 years for fire, socioeconomic, and ecosystem services metrics. For example, scenarios with federal restoration treatments had slightly less high-severity fire than a scenario without treatment; exposure of homes in the wildland-urban interface to fire was also slightly less with restoration treatments compared to no management. Treatments appeared to be more effective at reducing high-severity fire in years with more fire than in years with less fire. Under the current management scenario, timber production could be maintained for at least 50 years on federal lands. Under an accelerated restoration scenario, timber production fell because of a shortage of areas meeting current stand structure treatment targets. Trade-offs between restoration outcomes (e.g., open forests with large fire-resistant trees) and habitat for species that require dense older forests were evident. For example, the proportional area of nesting habitat for northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) was somewhat less after 50 years under the restoration scenarios than under no management. However, the amount of resilient older forest structure and habitat for white-headed woodpecker (Leuconotopicus albolarvatus) was higher after 50 years under active management. More carbon was stored on this landscape without management than with management, despite the occurrence of high-severity wildfire. Our results and further applications of the model could be used in collaborative settings to facilitate discussion and development of policies and practices for fire-prone landscapes.

Expansion of the wildland–urban interface (WUI) and the increasing size and number of wildfires has policy-makers and wildfire managers seeking ways to reduce wildfire risk in communities located near fire-prone forests. It is widely acknowledged that homeowners can reduce their exposure to wildfire risk by using nonflammable building materials and reducing tree density near the home, among other actions. Although these actions can reduce the vulnerability of homes to wildfire, many homeowners do not take them. We examined the influence of risk factors on homeowners’ perceived wildfire risk components using a survey of WUI homeowners in central Oregon (USA) and biophysical data that described wildfire risk as predicted by wildfire simulation models, past wildfire, and vegetation characteristics. Our analysis included homeowners’ perceptions of the likelihood of wildfire and resulting damage, and examined how these factors contribute to homeowners’ likelihood to conduct mitigation actions. We developed an empirical model of homeowners’ risk perceptions and mitigation behavior, which served as input into an agent-based model to examine potential landscape and behavior changes over 50 years. We found homeowners’ wildfire risk perceptions to be positively correlated with hazardous conditions predicted by fuel models and weakly predictive of mitigation behavior. Homeowners’ perceived chance of wildfire was positively correlated with actual probability of wildfire, while their perceived chance of damage to the home was positively correlated with potential wildfire intensity. Wildfire risk perceptions also were found to be correlated with past wildfire experience. Our results suggest that homeowners may be savvy observers of landscape conditions, which act as “feedbacks” that enhance homeowners’ concerns about wildfire hazard and motivate them to take mitigation action. Alternatively, homeowners living in hazardous locations are somehow receiving the message that they need to take protective measures. Mitigation compliance output from the agent-based model suggests that completion of mitigation actions is likely to increase over 50 years under various scenarios.

Coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) research highlights reciprocal interactions (or feedbacks) between biophysical and socioeconomic variables to explain system dynamics and resilience. Empirical models often are used to test hypotheses and apply theory that represent human behavior. Parameterizing reciprocal interactions presents two challenges for social scientists: (1) how to represent human behavior as influenced by biophysical factors and integrate this into CHANS empirical models; (2) how to organize and function as a multidisciplinary social science team to accomplish that task. We reflect on these challenges regarding our CHANS research that investigated human adaptation to fire-prone landscapes. Our project sought to characterize the forest management activities of land managers and landowners (or “actors”) and their influence on wildfire behavior and landscape outcomes by focusing on biophysical and socioeconomic feedbacks in central Oregon (USA). We used an agent-based model (ABM) to compile biophysical and social information pertaining to actor behavior, and to project future landscape conditions under alternative management scenarios. Project social scientists were tasked with identifying actors’ forest management activities and biophysical and socioeconomic factors that influence them, and with developing decision rules for incorporation into the ABM to represent actor behavior. We (1) briefly summarize what we learned about actor behavior on this fire-prone landscape and how we represented it in an ABM, and (2) more significantly, report our observations about how we organized and functioned as a diverse team of social scientists to fulfill these CHANS research tasks. We highlight several challenges we experienced, involving quantitative versus qualitative data and methods, distilling complex behavior into empirical models, varying sensitivity of biophysical models to social factors, synchronization of research tasks, and the need to substitute spatial for temporal variation in social data and models, among others. We offer recommendations that other research teams might consider when collaborating with social scientists in CHANS research.

Forest policymakers and managers have long sought ways to evaluate the capability of forest landscapes to jointly produce timber, habitat, and other ecosystem services in response to forest management. Currently, carbon is of particular interest as policies for increasing carbon storage on federal lands are being proposed. However, a challenge in joint production analysis of forest management is adequately representing ecological conditions and processes that influence joint production relationships. We used simulation models of vegetation structure, forest sector carbon, and potential wildlife habitat to characterize landscape-level joint production possibilities for carbon storage, timber harvest, and habitat for seven wildlife species across a range of forest management regimes. We sought to (1) characterize the general relationships of production possibilities for combinations of carbon storage, timber, and habitat, and (2) identify management variables that most influence joint production relationships. Our 160000-ha study landscape featured environmental conditions typical of forests in the Western Cascade Mountains of Oregon (USA). Our results indicate that managing forests for carbon storage involves trade-offs among timber harvest and habitat for focal wildlife species, depending on the disturbance interval and utilization intensity followed. Joint production possibilities for wildlife species varied in shape, ranging from competitive to complementary to compound, reflecting niche breadth and habitat component needs of species examined. Managing Pacific Northwest forests to store forest sector carbon can be roughly complementary with habitat for Northern Spotted Owl, Olive-sided Flycatcher, and red tree vole. However, managing forests to increase carbon storage potentially can be competitive with timber production and habitat for Pacific marten, Pileated Woodpecker, and Western Bluebird, depending on the disturbance interval and harvest intensity chosen. Our analysis suggests that joint production possibilities under forest management regimes currently typical on industrial forest lands (e.g., 40- to 80-yr rotations with some tree retention for wildlife) represent but a small fraction of joint production outcomes possible in the region. Although the theoretical boundaries of the production possibilities sets we developed are probably unachievable in the current management environment, they arguably define the long-term potential of managing forests to produce multiple ecosystem services within and across multiple forest ownerships.

Historical land and fire management practices coupled with climate change and modern human development pressures are contributing to larger, more frequent, and more severe wildfires across Western U.S. forests. Human ignitions are the predominant cause of wildfire throughout the United States, necessitating wildfire management strategies that consider both the causes of human ignitions and the factors that influence them. Using a dataset of over 104,000 ignitions from 1992 to 2018 for Oregon and Washington (U.S), we examine the major causes of wildfire ignitions and build regression models to evaluate the potential influence of both biophysical and socioeconomic factors on human and natural ignitions across distinct fire regimes west and east of the Cascade Range. Our results corroborate prior findings that socioeconomic factors such as income, employment, population density, and age demographics are significantly correlated with human ignitions. In the Pacific Northwest, we found that the importance of socioeconomic factors on human ignitions differs significantly between the west and east sides of the Cascade Range. We also found that most human ignitions are linked to escaped fires from recreation or debris and open burning activities, highlighting opportunities to tailor wildfire prevention efforts to better control higher risk activities and reduce accidental ignitions.

Scientists are increasingly called upon to integrate across ecological and social disciplines to tackle complex coupled human and natural system (CHANS) problems. Integration of these disciplines is challenging and many scientists do not have experience with large integrated research projects. However, much can be learned about the complicated process of integration from such efforts. We document some of these lessons from a National Science Foundation-funded CHANS project (Forests, People, Fire) and present considerations for developing and engaging in coupled human and natural system projects. Certainly we are not the first to undertake this endeavor, and many of our findings complement those of other research teams. We focus here on the process of coming together, learning to work as an integrated science team, and describe the challenges and opportunities of engaging stakeholders (agency personnel and citizen communities of interests) in our efforts. Throughout this project our intention was to foster dialogue among diverse interests and, thus, incorporate this knowledge into uncovering primary social and ecological drivers of change. A primary tool was an agent-based model, Envision, that used this information in landscape simulation, visualization models, and scenario development. Although integration can be an end in itself, the proof of value in the approach can be the degree to which it provides new insights or tools to CHANS, including closer interaction among multiple stakeholders, that could not have been reached without it.