Collaborative Research: Planning: FIRE-PLAN: Wildland Fire Science and Management in Semi-Arid Regions

In recent decades, semi-arid regions around the globe have been increasingly beset by wildland fires that have grown dramatically in their size, frequency, and severity. A combination of climate change, growth in human population density, and years of ecological management emphasizing fire suppression, have resulted in increasingly intensive wildfires whose risks of catastrophic change to the safety and wellbeing of nearby human, animal and other ecologies now reach unprecedented levels.

In an effort to address these issues, wildland fire science has taken a renewed interest in exploring novel approaches to fire management, including approaches that consider multi-agency, private and public, and even state, federal and tribal partnerships to address how best to live with wildfire. This project develops plans to advance wildland fire research science and management in the Payahuunadü / Owens Valley & Eastern Sierra region of California.

Activities bring together regional stakeholders, scholars, and practitioners to collaborate on an action framework combining Indigenous knowledge systems, natural sciences, and the social sciences, to assess wildfire causes, effects, and management techniques. The team draws on past work building relationships across multiple constituencies to address community- and nature-based fire research aims and management measures.

The awarded research project develops a different approach to planning wildfire science research and management across diverse stakeholder communities working and living in regions at risk for catastrophic wildfire. In workshops, collective drafting exercises, and site visits to related fire management programs, the project brings together a diverse team of tribal leaders, Indigenous knowledge keepers, fire science ecologists, government agents and social scientists on plans of action built through and for collaborative partnerships that integrate Indigenous fire science and management practices with natural science wildfire research modeling and data analysis.

The project tests the efficacy of co-management plans for addressing wildfire risks faced by diverse stakeholders with interests in the ecosystems, populations, and industries they share. Additionally, it offers a model of best practices for collaboration, consultation, and cooperation relevant to Tribal, State and Federal government-to-government partnerships more generally.

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.