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...
Disasters result from hazards affecting vulnerable people. Most disasters research by anthropologists focuses on vulnerability; this article focuses on natural hazards. We use the case of wildfire mitigation on United States Forest Service lands in the northwestern United States to examine social, political, and economic variables at multiple scales that...
Wildland fire affects both public and private resources throughout the United States. A century of fire suppression has contributed to changing ecological conditions and accumulated fuel loads. Managers have used a variety of approaches to address these conditions and reduce the likelihood of wildland fires that may result in adverse...
Within the wildland-urban interface (WUI), wildfire risk contains both individual and collective components.
The likelihood that a particular home will be threatened by wildfire in any given year is low, but
at a broader scale the likelihood that a home somewhere in the WUI will be threatened is substantially
higher....
The majority of social science research is cross-sectional in nature, with data collected at a single point in time. However, social systems are dynamic and many of the variables of interest to social scientists may change over time. Longitudinal research methods enable data collection at two or more points in...
As with other aspects of natural-resource management, the approach to managing wildland fires has evolved
over time as scientific understanding has advanced and the broader context surrounding management decisions has
changed. Prior to 2000 the primary focus of most fire research was on the physical and ecological aspects of fire;...