Start Date
5-17-2017 4:00 PM
End Date
5-17-2017 7:00 PM
Subjects
Forest management -- Oregon -- Citizen participation, Prescribed burning, Wildfire risk, Forest landscape management
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/20330
Description
Management of public lands in the U.S. aims to achieve multiple goals relating to ecological function, wildlife habitat, support of local economies, and recreation; and in fire-prone landscapes these goals are often combined with fuels reduction treatments such as forest thinning and prescribed fire. Applied landscape research may attempt to evaluate the tradeoffs implicit in public lands planning or envision potential future land management scenarios, but often fails to incorporate the spatial diversity of stakeholder perspectives. This study explores the use of public participation geographic systems (PPGIS) to identify spatial and thematic community preferences for fuel treatments in a fire-prone landscape in eastern Oregon. Through open-ended questionnaires and formal focus groups, participants identified their management preferences and identified areas they consider priorities for different types and intensities of fuel treatments. By digitizing these PPGIS-derived treatment maps and supplementing with treatment areas according to identified themes (e.g., protected areas, areas of decreased forest vitality), this research models the effects of alternative fuel reduction scenarios on wildfire spread across large landscapes during extreme weather events. In addition, this study provides insight into stakeholders’ preferences for fuel treatments, with preliminary results indicating high levels of approval for a variety of fuel reduction treatments.
Included in
Natural Resources and Conservation Commons, Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons
Would You Like Fires with That? Using Stakeholder-Derived Forest Management Preference Maps to Model Landscape-level Fuel Reduction Treatment Effects on Wildfire Spread
Management of public lands in the U.S. aims to achieve multiple goals relating to ecological function, wildlife habitat, support of local economies, and recreation; and in fire-prone landscapes these goals are often combined with fuels reduction treatments such as forest thinning and prescribed fire. Applied landscape research may attempt to evaluate the tradeoffs implicit in public lands planning or envision potential future land management scenarios, but often fails to incorporate the spatial diversity of stakeholder perspectives. This study explores the use of public participation geographic systems (PPGIS) to identify spatial and thematic community preferences for fuel treatments in a fire-prone landscape in eastern Oregon. Through open-ended questionnaires and formal focus groups, participants identified their management preferences and identified areas they consider priorities for different types and intensities of fuel treatments. By digitizing these PPGIS-derived treatment maps and supplementing with treatment areas according to identified themes (e.g., protected areas, areas of decreased forest vitality), this research models the effects of alternative fuel reduction scenarios on wildfire spread across large landscapes during extreme weather events. In addition, this study provides insight into stakeholders’ preferences for fuel treatments, with preliminary results indicating high levels of approval for a variety of fuel reduction treatments.