Goals & Objectives:

1. Document how a set of public and private landowners is collaboratively restoring a fire-adapted forest landscape that crosses multiple property boundaries while also mitigating the risk of large wildfires
2. Identify the key distinguishing forest and wildfire management goals, values, experiences and practices of the landowners involved
3. Characterize primary social and ecological constraints and opportunities for collaboratively managing forest ecosystems at the landscape scale
4. Evaluate different institutions, authorities, and policies for collaboration on landscape scale forest restoration and wildfire risk management
5. Develop policy strategies for enhancing landscape scale approaches to forest restoration and wildfire risk management

Theoretical Justification, Social Benefit, or Significance: 

Managing forests at the large spatial scales is important for promoting ecosystem health and productivity, conserving biodiversity, and sustaining critical ecosystem services. Management at large spatial scales is especially important for mitigating wildfire risk and incursions by invasive plants, pests and pathogens, and sustaining animal species that move across property and other administrative boundaries through contiguous vegetation. Managing at large spatial scales is a challenge, however, as ecological dynamics at such scales at not well-understood. Social dynamics, however, are arguably the biggest barrier. Managing common pool resources (e.g., habitat, water) in the context of mixed-property rights regimes—federal, state, individual, corporate, tribal—each with their own management values, objectives, and practices, and financial and regulatory constraints, is complicated and can lead to conflict. This is especially true in the American West where the institution of private property ownership is strong, tensions between federal and private landowners are high, and the benefits and costs of acting collectively are unclear. At the same time, the American West stands to benefit greatly from collaborative landscape scale approaches. Large wildfires alone destroy thousands of homes and millions of acres of forestland in the region each year by burning across property boundaries. A collaborative landscape scale approach to restoring fire-prone forests and mitigating wildfire risk could help reduce damages from unnaturally large wildfires.

The proposed project aims to examine the social dynamics of managing forests at the landscape scale in a wildfire-prone, mixed-ownership setting: the high desert ranch and timber country of Eastern Oregon. The project team will examine one case of landscape scale management in which a diverse set public and private landowners are jointly planning and implementing forest practices to restore fire-prone ecosystem while mitigating the risk of large wildfires. The case is a project of the US Forest Service (USFS)–Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Chiefs’ Joint Landscape Restoration Partnership (Joint Chiefs), a federal program established in federal fiscal year 2014 to improve forest health and resiliency where public and private lands interface. From a science perspective, the project will contribute to knowledge about ecosystem management, common pool resource management, collective action, and cross-boundary cooperation. From an applied perspective, the project will identify strategies including institutional arrangements and policy tools to enhance the success of fire-prone forest restoration and wildfire risk management. it will shed light on the complexity of the challenge, and ways forward to implement it on the ground.

Specific Activities & Duration: 

The project team will conduct (1) background research on the project and its social and ecological context, (2) fieldwork at the study site to learn from the key stakeholders, and (3) a follow up questionnaire to gather additional information and solicit feedback on preliminary insights. The background research will entail a review of ecological and geo-spatial data, socio-economic and demographic information, and policy documents. The on-site fieldwork will consist of individual and/or focus groups with key stakeholders. The follow up questionnaire will be a combination mail-internet survey. Background research will take place in the winter and spring term of 2018, on-site fieldwork will occur in the early summer of 2018, and the follow up survey will be administered in early fall 2018. Late fall 2018 and winter 2019 will be dedicated to making sense of results and communicating lessons learned with the client and practitioners in the field.

Integrative Approach: 

This research project is interdisciplinary in nature. Investigating social and ecological factors in managing forests at large spatial scales requires ecological knowledge and ecosystem analysis skills, knowledge and methodological skills regarding human behavior, and policy analysis and planning knowledge and skills.