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Article
Re-Envisioning Community-Wildfire Relations in the U.S. West as Adaptive Governance
Ecology and Society
  • Jesse B. Abrams, University of Oregon
  • Melanie Knapp, University of Oregon
  • Travis B. Paveglio, University of Idaho
  • Autumn Ellison, Portland State University
  • Cassandra Moseley, University of Oregon
  • Max Nielsen-Pincus, Portland State University
  • Matthew S. Carroll, Washington State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2015
Subjects
  • Wildfires -- New Mexico,
  • Disaster resilience,
  • Wildfires -- Prevention and control -- Environmental aspects
Abstract

Prompted by a series of increasingly destructive, expensive, and highly visible wildfire crises in human communities across the globe, a robust body of scholarship has emerged to theorize, conceptualize, and measure community-level resilience to wildfires. To date, however, insufficient consideration has been given to wildfire resilience as a process of adaptive governance mediated by institutions at multiple scales. Here we explore the possibilities for addressing this gap through an analysis of wildfire resilience among wildland-urban interface communities in the western region of the United States. We re-engage important but overlooked components of social-ecological system resilience by situating rural communities within their state-to national-level institutional contexts; we then analyze two communities in Nevada and New Mexico in terms of their institutional settings and responses to recent wildfire events. We frame our analysis around the concepts of scale matching, linking within and across scales, and institutional flexibility.

Rights

Copyright © 2015 by the author(s). License by the Resilience Alliance

Description

Archived here with author and publisher permission.

DOI
10.5751/ES-07848-200334
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/16233
Citation Information
Abrams, J. B., M. Knapp, T. B. Paveglio, A. Ellison, C. Moseley, M. Nielsen-Pincus, and M. C. Carroll. (2015) Re-envisioning community-wildfire relations in the U.S. West as adaptive governance. Ecology and Society 20(3):34