My current research and engagement in this are relates to understanding how decentralized wildfire protection planning processes shape the implementation of risk mitigation measures at both local and regional scales. Increasingly, wildfire policy and research emphasize the importance of accounting for autonomous but interdependent decision-making processes that span spatial and administrative scales.
Wildfire lies at the core of my current and future research, with ongoing projects focusing on
- risk interdependence and cross-boundary mitigation actions,
- disparities in vulnerability across populations and their capacity to adapt to a changing climate, and
- theoretical advances to understand adaptation in complex hazard-prone environments.
Additionally, I’ve been involved with the Western Forest and Fire Initiative (WFFI). WFFI is an interdisciplinary working group of faculty, students, and postdoctoral fellows at University of Michigan, seeking to understand the complexity that emerges at the intersection of forest health, climate change, wildfires, and community resilience.
Based at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, the goal of the initiative is to:
- Improve the understanding of the problematic relationship between wildfire, forests, and communities in a changing climate as a complex adaptive social-ecological system (SES), and
- Contribute to the development of better ways to manage this SES to reduce the risk of large wildfires, improve the vitality of human communities, and help society adapt to climate change.
You can read more about the initiative by visiting the project’s website (https://wffi.seas.umich.edu/)