Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
J Environ Manage. 2019 Oct 15;248:109286. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.109286. Epub 2019 Jul 22.
A number of watershed partnerships have emerged in the western US to address the impacts of wildfire through investing in wildfire mitigation activities. To motivate collective action and design effective risk mitigation programs, these stakeholders draw on evidence linking wildfire mitigation to outcomes of interest. To advance knowledge in this area, we 1) assessed the strength of existing scientific evidence linking wildfire mitigation treatments with societal outcomes and 2) measured the importance of this evidence to watershed partnerships in the western US. To address objective one, we created a systematic evidence map to identify the most common wildfire mitigation treatment and societal outcome relationships reported. From the more than 100 studies examined, we found that the most commonly studied linkages were related to the impacts of thinning on infrastructure and timber. To answer objective two, we surveyed 38 professionals affiliated with organizations involved in eight watershed partnerships in the western US. We asked about the relative importance and strength of evidence linking wildfire treatments to societal outcomes for their watershed partnership, and used this information to create an importance-strength analysis and gap analysis. We found that most linkages were considered important to these organizations, and that the biggest gap identified was for evidence linking mulching to water quality or quantity outcomes. Forest and wildfire specialists perceived a larger need for additional evidence generation than other professional groups. Jointly, the results from this study point to areas of evidence generation important for watershed partnerships and other organizations involved in wildfire mitigation, and suggest a need to more thoroughly disseminate information about existing evidence to this new group of stakeholders investing in wildfire risk mitigation.
美国西部已经出现了许多流域合作伙伴关系，通过投资于野火缓解活动来应对野火的影响。为了激发集体行动和设计有效的风险缓解计划，这些利益相关者利用将野火缓解与利益相关结果联系起来的证据。为了在这一领域推进知识，我们 1）评估了将野火缓解措施与社会结果联系起来的现有科学证据的强度，2）衡量了该证据对美国西部流域合作伙伴关系的重要性。为了解决目标 1，我们创建了一个系统的证据图，以确定报告的最常见的野火缓解处理和社会结果关系。在审查的 100 多项研究中，我们发现研究最多的联系与疏伐对基础设施和木材的影响有关。为了回答目标 2，我们调查了与美国西部八个流域伙伴关系组织有关的 38 名专业人员。我们询问了将野火处理与社会结果联系起来的证据对他们的流域伙伴关系的相对重要性和强度，并利用这些信息创建了一个重要性-强度分析和差距分析。我们发现，大多数联系对这些组织来说都是重要的，而确定的最大差距是将覆盖物与水质或水量结果联系起来的证据。森林和野火专家认为比其他专业群体更需要额外的证据生成。总的来说，这项研究的结果指出了流域合作伙伴关系和其他参与野火缓解的组织重要的证据生成领域，并表明需要更彻底地向投资于野火风险缓解的这一新利益相关群体传播有关现有证据的信息。
