New types of investments needed to address barriers to scaling up wildfire risk mitigation.

Background: Wildfire mitigation is becoming increasingly urgent, but despite the availability of mitigation tools, such as prescribed fire, managed wildfire, and mechanical thinning, the USA has been unable to scale up mitigation. Limited agency capacity, inability to work across jurisdictions, lack of public support, and procedural delays have all been cited as barriers to mitigation. But in the context of limited resources and increasing urgency, how should agencies prioritize investments to address these barriers?

Results: To better understand different investments for scaling up mitigation, we examined how the wildfire problem is framed, building on existing social science demonstrating that agency approaches depend in part on how problems are framed.

Navigating Climate Adaptation on Public Lands: How Views on Ecosystem Change and Scale Interact with Management Approaches.

Managers are increasingly being asked to integrate climate change adaptation into public land management. The literature discusses a range of adaptation approaches, including managing for resistance, resilience, and transformation; but many strategies have not yet been widely tested. This study employed in-depth interviews and scenario-based focus groups in the Upper Gunnison Basin in Colorado to learn how public land managers envision future ecosystem change, and how they plan to utilize different management approaches in the context of climate adaptation.