Our final discussion reflects issues that have come up repeatedly in past classes--prescribed fire and smoke management. Both of these issues can be complex and nuanced influences on broader wildfire management. The have also enjoyed increased attention and notoriety in policy discussions.
 |
| NPS.gov |
Please submit your comments by noon on Monday. That will give our discussion leads adequate time to prepare for their duties.
Schultz et al.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, air quality is not as much of an issue as lack of personnel when it comes to prescribed burn implementation. However, as more research is generated and publicized focusing on the health harms of smoke exposure, this could change. What are some ways to anticipate and prepare for this potential shift in public perception of smoke from a management perspective?
Weir et al.
Florida, the state with the most robust burn program, has codified prescribed burning as a right. It seems like it could be possible to also codify burning in neighboring Southeastern states with similar biophysical and cultural characteristics. What types of communication strategies could help facilitate these policy changes?
Dittrick & McCallum
Subjective Well-being Approach (SWB) aims to find links between personal attributes and well-being by matching subjective estimates of life satisfaction with sociodemographic variables. Authors note that this approach is gaining traction, as it makes fewer assumptions about actors' rationality - but it is still making many assumptions by using subjective estimates of "well-being" and what that means to people. If that's case, can SWB still be useful? How could it be modified to fit a broad definition of well-being, or to or allow for archetypes of well-being nested within a larger definition of the term? If not, why not?
For some reason I got sucked into someone's dissertation ripping this theory apart and just in case any of you also like to read long rambling papers and have no real sense of the passage of time I will link it here: https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/149317/1/Fabian,%20PhD%20Dissertation,%20FINAL%20SUBMISSION.pdf
Weir et al make the assumption that landowners resist prescribed fire because of the perception that it is dangerous. Is this assumption valid? How might questioning both the notion of “resistance” and of perceived danger/risk aversion contribute to the conversation about greater implementation of prescribed fire?
ReplyDeleteFuel loading is a metric used by fire managers to measure the amount of live and dead fuels on a landscape. Generally given in tons/acre, it is used by many states as a predictive metric to calculate smoke emissions for prescribed fire. How might the concept of fuel loading be mobilized within the WUI to think about the build-up of hazardous fuels, including but not limited to, houses, propane tanks, fire wood, etc? Could this be a metric of assessment that moves toward a more just distribution of such issues as the “economic health costs” of wildfire smoke?
Why are prescribed fire and mechanical treatments given equivalence in the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy as tools of creating resilient landscapes when studies have proven that prescribed fire is the best strategy for reducing fire severity?
Weir et al. propose that the scale and frequency of fire in Georgia and Florida can be attributed to the gross negligence statute, but it seems more likely that the opposite is true – that the gross negligence statute would be in place because people understand the role of fire and have a higher risk tolerance to it. Weir et al. also state that in Case Study 2, the majority of local burners went on burning as they had been prior to the escaped burn and subsequent lawsuits. Given this, do you think the change in statute would be effective?
ReplyDeleteSchultz et al. found that formal air quality regulations were not a major constraint on prescribed burning. They also had some respondents cite a lack of support from agency administrators and line officers. Could informal limitations on smoke, through perceived or expected impact on local communities, be acting as a constraint?
Weir
For the defensive behavior method (DBM) to provide an accurate measure of an individual’s willingness to pay, do individuals have to be well-versed in the short and long term impacts of wildfire smoke exposure and the options they have to minimize those impacts? If so, is this a useful measurement of cost?
While advocating for a broader cultural shift in which the perceived risk of prescribed fire is “desensationalized”, Weir et al. tend to restrict their discussion of real and perceived risk to the southern Great Plains. Are there actual and perceived risks or liabilities that apply specifically to the Rocky Mountain West that go unmentioned in their analysis?
ReplyDeleteOne of the findings of Schulz et al. is that, in the absence of proper funding/resources, enlarging state and federal capacity for prescribed fire will depend in no small part on pro-fire employees and their efforts to build local trust. To an agency outsider like myself, this appears to ask a lot from individuals whose agencies are chronically short-staffed. For those in the class who work in fire, what are your thoughts/concerns about this scenario?
Dittrich & McCallum: Could recent societal adaptations to COVID-19 be leveraged to partially mitigate the health and economic costs of wildfire smoke by mandating or incentivizing remote work during fire reason?
Weir et al. recommends changing state statues relating to the use of prescribed fire. How might Western states respond to implementing something similar to Florida's Right to Burn Act?
ReplyDeleteDittrick and McCallum did not discuss much about the health impacts on firefighters in their analysis. How are the health impacts of wildfire and prescribed fire different for firefighters?
Schultz et al
Funding and capacity limitation were a common barrier among interviewees and suggests focusing on collaborative measures as a possible solution (I). Should agencies like the EPA be providing funding to the Forest Service to help meet their goals for air quality standards?
Schultz et al. mentioned a common theme majority of land manager interviewees raised was the importance of personal commitment and leadership on the part of line officers and fire management staff. They had also mentioned if there were no incentives to find a way it wouldn't be done. Residents may have felt their voices, property, were not understood or taken into serious consideration. However, in the methods section they mentioned a minimum of one individual from the USFS, BLM, state forestry agency, and air quality regulatory authority were targeted for interviews. Would the small number of interviewees have resulted in the concern for the commitment and leaderships?
ReplyDeleteWeir et al mentioned an individual had stopped using prescribed fire because of concerns about the actions of others; the power of others opinions can persuade individuals into stopping use of prescribed fire strongly. How can researchers reverse this thinking or can it be reversed?
I agree with Greyson, they (Dittrich and McCallum) focused on the economic health cost of wildfires; however didn't mention the cost towards firefighters health. Why would they not focus on the firefighters health impacts; wouldn't this be significant to reach towards firefighters to determine what health conditions they have/had suffered from wildfires?
Weir et al
ReplyDeleteI think that the line in the conclusion – “fire needs to be desensationalized” really does get to the heart of it. Even with better information from land management agencies, I feel like local firefighting agencies still present a barrier. Changing from the status quo of suppression may see a bigger fight in local fire departments, especially in areas where there has been conflict between local and outside agencies. How might local fire chiefs be convinced to support increased use of prescribed fire?
Dittrich and McCallum
I see some value in understanding the health cost of wildfire in a broad (like national) policy discussion. I think as they pointed out- there needs to be better data to compare the relative cost of prescribed fire. Do you think that this type of broad economic health cost discussion will really resonate when risks and impacts are very local? I am concerned that this could become more impersonal data that is used by the disconnected (Washington DC) to make broad policy. I feel like the health effects of smoke, with comparisons between wild and prescribed fire, and an idea of where they impact (O3 effects in urban areas) would have greater overall usefulness in informing policy on many levels. It may be more useful if it could be used locally- like estimation of cost per unit population within x miles of a wildfire. Could be useful to identify how things like mitigation not only reduce the impact on neighboring property but also on the health of neighboring people.
Schultz et al.
I really found the substantial decrease in agency capacity striking. Is there a conceivable way to implement prescribed burning at these staffing levels? How often are agency personnel available on unit for prescribed fire? How many prescribed burns are conducted in ideal conditions vs conducted because they were lucky enough to have available people when conditions fit the prescription? It seems really daunting, reminds me of a tweet I think about a lot from a local musician “Sneaking suspicion that there’s got to be a better way is snuffed out by the all-encompassing demands of executing current way.” -Dessa (@dessadarling 4/23/2018)
Dittrick and McCallam 2020
ReplyDeleteHealth related costs are proportionally the highest among all types of costs from wildfires (paraphrased from D&M)… “this certainly suggests that from a cost–benefit point of view, the cost of suppression spending is justified by the potential (further) damage avoided from wildfire smoke.” Does this statement perpetuate the mentality of aggressive wildfire suppression?
Schultz et al. 2019
The USFS has lost 45% of its employees since 2000, yet this is the agency most relied on and recognized for managing wildland fire. I was surprised that this “brain drain” hasn’t come up more than tangentially in our readings/discussions this semester. Why do you think this loss of capacity has gone overlooked? Or do you think it has been given adequate attention in the literature?
Wier et al 2019
Prescribed Burn Associations appear to be a critical part of the discussion of private land prescribed burns in part because of their ability to negotiate with local politicians and insurance companies for their members. How successful are PBAs (if the exist) in areas that are culturally opposed to fire (like some parts of the West)? I struggled to find a PBA for the area around Moscow, where burning agricultural fields is a common practice.