Estimating social-ecological resilience: fire management futures in the Sonoran Desert.

Resilience quantifies the ability of a system to remain in or return to its current state following disturbance. Due to inconsistent terminology and usage of resilience frameworks, quantitative resilience studies are challenging, and resilience is often treated as an abstract concept rather than a measurable system characteristic. We used a novel, spatially explicit stakeholder engagement process to quantify social-ecological resilience to fire, in light of modeled social-ecological fire risk, across the non-fire-adapted Sonoran Desert Ecosystem in Arizona, USA.

Land management objectives and activities in the face of projected fire regime change in the Sonoran desert.

As a multi-jurisdictional, non-fire-adapted region, the Sonoran Desert Ecoregion is a complex, social-ecological system faced increasingly with no-analogue conditions. A diversity of management objectives and activities form the socioecological landscape of fire management. Different managers have different objectives, resources, and constraints, and each therefore applies different activities.