Influence of wildfire risk perception on agricultural land management decisions

Some types of agri-environmental conservation programs, known as Payments for Environmental Services (PES), provide financial incentives to owners of farms and ranchers that promote the reduction of soil erosion, the protection of wildlife habitat, and improved watersheds. However, droughts and wildfires in agricultural grasslands have increased significantly over the last three decades.

Funds from one such program, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), encourages farmers to let fields lie fallow, however there is a perception that fallow lands allow for buildup of biomass that can serve as fuel for wildfires that cause larger and more frequent fires. This project investigates how landowner perceptions of wildfire risk inform their land management decisions to participate in incentivized conservation programs.

Documenting and analyzing rural conservation efforts and responses of landowners to incentive programs coupled with their perceptions of wildfire risk provides critical information on how these extreme events impact the efficacy of incentivized conservation programs. This project employs stakeholder engagement of local farmers that will promote best-practices for managing and conserving agricultural environments.

This knowledge assists both policy makers and landowners to make effective decisions about conservation programs. Graduate and undergraduate students are mentored in interdisciplinary STEM research and methods.

While incentive programs that promote healthy agricultural land are popular alternatives to new environmental laws that govern landowner decisions, little is known about the effectiveness of these incentive programs to mitigate wildfires. Using a mix of geospatial analysis integrated with a survey and semi-structured interviews, rural land managers, farmers and ranchers provide their experiences with, perceptions of, and responses to wildfire on CRP lands and adjacent properties that include rangeland, agricultural fields, and rural residences.

This research provides data on how landowner perceptions of wildfire risk influence conservation land management decisions and assesses the subsequent impact that conservation programs and practices have on mitigating the occurrence and size of wildfire.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.