Sponsor
Portland State University. Department of Environmental Science and Management
First Advisor
Max Nielsen-Pincus
Term of Graduation
Spring 2023
Date of Publication
9-19-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (M.S.) in Environmental Science and Management
Department
Environmental Studies
Language
English
Subjects
Collaborative governance, Community-agency relationships, Issue framing, Social license, Wildfire management, Wildfire risk
DOI
10.15760/etd.3665
Physical Description
1 online resource (vii, 114 pages)
Abstract
Adverse impacts of wildfire in Western North America have become increasingly present through the 21st century, driven by landscape changes imposed by colonists in the 19th and 20th centuries. Community adaptations to wildfire will be necessary through the 21st century to restore landscapes and protect the safety and livelihoods of people who live in at-risk areas. Wildfire risk extends across countless environmental and social systems, and individuals have competing ideas about what constitutes that risk and how to best adapt to it. As resources are being allocated to community adaptations, important questions emerge about the values represented in the design of those adaptations. In this thesis, I empirically examine community adaptations to wildfire in Central Oregon in the United States to shed light on the processes of inclusion in collaborative management. Specifically, I explain how input from the public is incorporated into regional wildfire risk mitigation projects, and why some wildfire managers are more inclined than others to include public input in their project plans. I found that generally, projects are designed by wildfire management professionals based on their values and policy frameworks, but they design these projects to be tolerable by communities to avoid litigation. This structure for designing projects allows managers an amount of flexibility as to how they include public feedback in their projects. I found that different cultural perceptions about the nature of wildfire risk leads managers to include more or less public input in their project planning. I conclude that wildfire managers are leaving latent adaptive-capacity untapped by not deliberately including the public in the beginning stages of designing wildfire adaptation projects.
Rights
© 2023 Liam Resener
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/40892
Recommended Citation
Resener, Liam, "Community Adaptations to Wildfire Risk in Central Oregon, USA: an Empirical Study of Inclusionary Practices in Collaborative Wildfire Risk Mitigation" (2023). Dissertations and Theses. Paper 6529.
https://doi.org/10.15760/etd.3665
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