Fire Communication & Education
Webinar recording.
Description: This webinar will summarize recent research examining the equity implications of rising wildfire risk and associated costs, including insurance coverage and the comparative costs for risk management activities in populations with different incomes.
Presenter: Matthew R. Auer; The University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs
Webinar registration.
From building firelines to researching fire trends over time, fire management and science require great communication to be successful. Our panel will share their experiences and tips on how to effectively talk about fire to gain support and build a collaborative network. We’ll address your questions about fire science communication and discuss best practices for defining objectives, connecting with your audience, and tools/resources that can help along the way.
Webinar recording.
Description: This webinar will go over results of a recent literature review of studies that focus on the environmental justice aspects of wildfire, as well as present preliminary findings on how different socio-demographic groups have been affected by wildfires across California in the last decade.
Presenter: Francisco Escobedo; US Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station
Webinar recording.
Description: The U.S. Forest Service’s Wildfire Crisis Strategy, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that is funding the agency’s initial investments to reduce wildfire risk under the Strategy, both call for considering equity and environmental justice when implementing projects. We present practical applications of our research on the environmental justice implications of hazardous fuels reduction, including new tools, that help address this need.
Presenters: Susan Charnley & Mark Adams; US Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station
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Prebunking and debunking misinformation are first steps toward ensuring that policy makers, journalists, judges, members of the public, and elected officials are skeptical of weakly supported scientific information, which can hinder effective wildfire management.
Webinar recording.
How will you deliver your message to the right people?
Rangeland professionals know a lot about rangeland ecology and management, but not about marketing, especially online communication. Online communication is here to stay, investing time now to learn more about it will prepare you for the future.
Webinar recording.
What are you saying to them and what should they do?
Rangeland professionals know a lot about rangeland ecology and management, but not about marketing, especially online communication. Online communication is here to stay, investing time now to learn more about it will prepare you for the future.
Webinar recording.
Who are you talking to?
Rangeland professionals know a lot about rangeland ecology and management, but not about marketing, especially online communication. Online communication is here to stay, investing time now to learn more about it will prepare you for the future.
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After they have been delineated, PODs are essentially big boxes on the landscape that illustrate where fire could potentially be contained. Collaborators can then use CWPPs and other planning processes to fill those boxes with a wide variety of local and statewide spatial data about expected fire behavior, homes, infrastructure, and other values at risk to inform where resources should be expended to protect community values. Because PODs delineate where fires are likely to be contained, they can help operationalize CWPPs. Like CWPPs, PODs institutionalize knowledge and can be used to create a variety of maps and spatial data products. However, the real value of PODs and CWPPs comes from the collaborative processes used to create them, the interagency coordination and conversations they facilitate, and their power as communication tools between communities, land management agencies, and other stakeholders. By incorporating the PODs framework into a new or updated CWPP, a community is able to incorporate the latest science and use an operationally based planning framework that is broadly adopted and supported by federal agencies.
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We synthesize insights needed to better address the long-standing challenges of innovation across disciplines to (i) promote coordinated research efforts; (ii) embrace different ways of knowing and knowledge generation; (iii) promote exploration of fundamental science; (iv) capitalize on the “firehose” of data for societal benefit; and (v) integrate human and natural systems into models across multiple scales. Fire science is thus at a critical transitional moment. We need to shift from observation and modeled representations of varying components of climate, people, vegetation, and fire to more integrative and predictive approaches that support pathways toward mitigating and adapting to our increasingly flammable world, including the utilization of fire for human safety and benefit. Only through overcoming institutional silos and accessing knowledge across diverse communities can we effectively undertake research that improves outcomes in our more fiery future.