Engagement in local and collaborative wildfire risk mitigation planning across the western U.S.-Evaluating participation and diversity in Community Wildfire Protection Plans.

Since their introduction two decades ago, Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) have become a common planning tool for improving community preparedness and risk mitigation in fire-prone regions, and for strengthening coordination among federal and state land management agencies, local government, and residents. While CWPPs have been the focus of case studies, there are limited large-scale studies to understand the extent of, and factors responsible for, variation in stakeholder participation-a core element of the CWPP model. This article describes the scale and scope of participation in CWPPs across the western United States. We provide a detailed account of participants in over 1,000 CWPPs in 11 states and examine how levels of participation and stakeholder diversity vary as a function of factors related to planning process, planning context, and the broader geographic context in which plans were developed. We find that CWPPs vary substantially both by count and diversity of participants and that the former varies as a function of the geographic scale of the plan, while the latter varies largely as a function of the diversity of landowners within the jurisdiction. More than half of participants represented local interests, indicating a high degree of local engagement in hazard mitigation. Surprisingly, plan participation and diversity were unrelated to wildfire hazard. These findings suggest that CWPPs have been largely successful in their intent to engage diverse stakeholders in preparing for and mitigating wildfire risk, but that important challenges remain. We discuss the implications of this work and examine how the planning process and context for CWPPs may be changing.

Predicting Paradise: Modeling future wildfire disasters in the western US.

The 2018 Camp fire destroyed the town of Paradise, California and resulted in 82 fatalities, the worst wildfire disaster in the US to date. Future disasters of similar or greater magnitude are inevitable given predicted climate change but remain highly uncertain in terms of location and timing. As with other natural disasters, simulation models are one of the primary tools to map risk and design prevention strategies. However, risk assessments have focused on estimation of mean values rather than predicting extreme events that are increasingly becoming a reality in many parts of the globe. Using the western US as a study area, we synthesized newer wildfire simulation and building location data (54 million fires, 25 million building locations) and compared the outputs to several sources of observed exposure data. The simulations used synchronized weather among spatial simulation subunits, thereby providing estimates of extreme fire seasons, fire events within them, and exceedance probabilities at multiple scales. We found that annual area burned was accurately replicated by simulations but building exposure was substantially overestimated, although the relatively small historical sample size might have influenced the comparison. We identified extreme fire seasons in the simulation record (10,000 fire years) that exceeded historical fire seasons by 278% in terms of area burned, and 1255% in terms of buildings exposed, under contemporary climate. Simulated building exposure peaked in specific regions along gradients of building density and burnable fuels. The study is the first to explore large scale extreme wildfire exposure in terms of both annual variability and magnitude, providing a broad foundation of methods to advance wildfire disaster prediction.

Assessing Transboundary Wildfire Exposure in the Southwestern United States.

We assessed transboundary wildfire exposure among federal, state, and private lands and 447 communities in the state of Arizona, southwestern United States. The study quantified the relative magnitude of transboundary (incoming, outgoing) versus nontransboundary (i.e., self-burning) wildfire exposure based on land tenure or community of the simulated ignition and the resulting fire perimeter. We developed and described several new metrics to quantify and map transboundary exposure. We found that incoming transboundary fire accounted for 37% of the total area burned on large parcels of federal and state lands, whereas 63% of the area burned was burned by ignitions within the parcel. However, substantial parcel to parcel variation was observed for all land tenures for all metrics. We found that incoming transboundary fire accounted for 66% of the total area burned within communities versus 34% of the area burned by self-burning ignitions. Of the total area burned within communities, private lands contributed the largest proportion (36.7%), followed by national forests (19.5%), and state lands (15.4%). On average seven land tenures contributed wildfire to individual communities. Annual wildfire exposure to structures was highest for wildfires ignited on state and national forest land, followed by tribal, private, and BLM. We mapped community firesheds, that is, the area where ignitions can spawn fires that can burn into communities, and estimated that they covered 7.7 million ha, or 26% of the state of Arizona. Our methods address gaps in existing wildfire risk assessments, and their implementation can help reduce fragmentation in governance systems and inefficiencies in risk planning.

The wildland-urban interface raster dataset of Catalonia.

We provide the wildland urban interface (WUI) map of the autonomous community of Catalonia (Northeastern Spain). The map encompasses an area of some 3.21 million ha and is presented as a 150-m resolution raster dataset. Individual housing location, structure density and vegetation cover data were used to spatially assess in detail the interface, intermix and dispersed rural WUI communities with a geographical information system. Most WUI areas concentrate in the coastal belt where suburban sprawl has occurred nearby or within unmanaged forests. This geospatial information data provides an approximation of residential housing potential for loss given a wildfire, and represents a valuable contribution to assist landscape and urban planning in the region.

Network analysis of wildfire transmission and implications for risk governance.

We characterized wildfire transmission and exposure within a matrix of large land tenures (federal, state, and private) surrounding 56 communities within a 3.3 million ha fire prone region of central Oregon US. Wildfire simulation and network analysis were used to quantify the exchange of fire among land tenures and communities and analyze the relative contributions of human versus natural ignitions to wildfire exposure. Among the land tenures examined, the area burned by incoming fires averaged 57% of the total burned area. Community exposure from incoming fires ignited on surrounding land tenures accounted for 67% of the total area burned. The number of land tenures contributing wildfire to individual communities and surrounding wildland urban interface (WUI) varied from 3 to 20. Community firesheds, i.e. the area where ignitions can spawn fires that can burn into the WUI, covered 40% of the landscape, and were 5.5 times larger than the combined area of the community core and WUI. For the major land tenures within the study area, the amount of incoming versus outgoing fire was relatively constant, with some exceptions. The study provides a multi-scale characterization of wildfire networks within a large, mixed tenure and fire prone landscape, and illustrates the connectivity of risk between communities and the surrounding wildlands. We use the findings to discuss how scale mismatches in local wildfire governance result from disconnected planning systems and disparate fire management objectives among the large landowners (federal, state, private) and local communities. Local and regional risk planning processes can adopt our concepts and methods to better define and map the scale of wildfire risk from large fire events and incorporate wildfire network and connectivity concepts into risk assessments.

Exploring Categorical Body Mass Index Trajectories in Elementary School Children.

BACKGROUND: Studies of body mass index (BMI) change have focused on understanding growth trajectories from childhood to adolescence and adolescence to adulthood, but few have explored BMI trajectories solely in elementary (grades K-5) school children. This report complements these studies by exploring changes in obesity status using analytic methods developed to investigate categorical changes in life-course events. METHODS: Sequences of a 4-state BMI variable (underweight, normal, overweight, and obese) were calculated using height and weight data collected annually (2008-2013) from 414 kindergarten and first-grade students participating in the Community and Schools Together (CAST) project. These sequences were explored using the TraMineR software package to investigate the distribution of sequences and states, calculate transition rates among states, and examine clustering of sequences. RESULTS: Aggregated cluster solutions were identified consisting of either 4 clusters (normal, stepped, mixed, and obese) or 3 clusters (aggregation of obese cluster cases into stepped cluster) with membership in the former predicted by ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) and the latter by SES alone. Transition rate patterns among states varied markedly by cluster and state. CONCLUSION: The finding of early emergence of stable obesity states, especially in Hispanic children confirms the need for early childhood interventions to influence BMI.

A Community-Based Participatory Research Approach for Preventing Childhood Obesity: The Communities and Schools Together Project.

BACKGROUND: Childhood obesity is a systemic and complex, multilevel public health problem. Research approaches are needed that effectively engage communities in reversing environmental determinants of child obesity. OBJECTIVES: This article discusses the Communities and Schools Together (CAST) Project and lessons learned about the project's community-based participatory research (CBPR) model. METHODS: A partnership of schools, community organizations, and researchers used multiple methods to examine environmental health risks for childhood obesity and conduct school-community health programs. Action work groups structured partner involvement for designing and implementing study phases. LESSONS LEARNED: CBPR in child obesity prevention involves engaging multiple communities with overlapping yet divergent goals. Schools are naturally situated to participate in child obesity projects, but engagement of key personnel is essential for functional partnerships. Complex societal problems require CBPR approaches that can align diverse communities and necessitate significant coordination by researchers. CBPR can provide simultaneous health promotion across multiple communities in childhood obesity prevention initiatives. Support for emergent partner activities is an essential practice for maintaining community interest and involvement in multiyear CBPR projects. CONCLUSION: Investigator-initiated CBPR partnerships can effectively organize and facilitate large, health-promoting partnerships involving multiple, diverse stakeholder communities. Lessons learned from CAST illustrate the synergy that can propel projects that are holistically linked to the agents of a community.

A new model to simulate climate-change impacts on forest succession for local land management.

We developed a new climate-sensitive vegetation state-and-transition simulation model (CV-STSM) to simulate future vegetation at a fine spatial grain commensurate with the scales of human land-use decisions, and under the joint influences of changing climate, site productivity, and disturbance. CV-STSM integrates outputs from four different modeling systems. Successional changes in tree species composition and stand structure were represented as transition probabilities and organized into a state-and-transition simulation model. States were characterized based on assessments of both current vegetation and of projected future vegetation from a dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM). State definitions included sufficient detail to support the integration of CV-STSM with an agent-based model of land-use decisions and a mechanistic model of fire behavior and spread. Transition probabilities were parameterized using output from a stand biometric model run across a wide range of site productivities. Biogeographic and biogeochemical projections from the DGVM were used to adjust the transition probabilities to account for the impacts of climate change on site productivity and potential vegetation type. We conducted experimental simulations in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, USA. Our simulation landscape incorporated detailed new assessments of critically imperiled Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana) savanna and prairie habitats among the suite of existing and future vegetation types. The experimental design fully crossed four future climate scenarios with three disturbance scenarios. CV-STSM showed strong interactions between climate and disturbance scenarios. All disturbance scenarios increased the abundance of oak savanna habitat, but an interaction between the most intense disturbance and climate-change scenarios also increased the abundance of subtropical tree species. Even so, subtropical tree species were far less abundant at the end of simulations in CV-STSM than in the dynamic global vegetation model simulations. Our results indicate that dynamic global vegetation models may overestimate future rates of vegetation change, especially in the absence of stand-replacing disturbances. Modeling tools such as CV-STSM that simulate rates and direction of vegetation change affected by interactions and feedbacks between climate and land-use change can help policy makers, land managers, and society as a whole develop effective plans to adapt to rapidly changing climate.

Refining The Grain: Using Resident-Based Walkability Audits To Better Understand Walkable Urban Form.

Researchers use measures of street connectivity to assess neighborhood walkability and many studies show a relationship between neighborhood design and walking activity. Yet, the core of those connectivity measures are based on constructs designed for analyzing automobile mobility - the street network - not pedestrian movement. This paper examines the effect of a finer grained characterization of street connectivity and illustrates the idea using parent ratings of street and intersection walkability for children throughout a suburban school district in Oregon. Several policy and practice recommendations are presented, including a discussion that extends Michael Southworth's (1993; 2005) foundational representation of streets and the walkable city using a refined, more pedestrian-centered approach to visualizing connectivity and walkable urban form.

Parent Safety Perceptions of Child Walking Routes.

Walking rates to school remain low for U.S. children in large part due to parent concern for child safety. Little research has investigated the specific features of streets and intersection networks that parents associate with safe walking networks for children. To investigate which aspects of the child walking environment lead to parental concern, parent volunteers conducted an audit of streets leading to seven elementary schools in a suburban school district. Parents were most likely to feel concern about streets that lacked sidewalks or had sidewalks with obstructions. Wheelchair-accessible routes were seen as appropriate for walking children. Parents expressed concern over safety at intersections, particularly those involving large streets; traffic controls did not mollify their concern.