Doctoral Dissertation Research: Adaption and environmental governance amid changing landscapes of wildfire risks and water infrastructure

This project examines land management strategies in the context of tradeoffs between mitigating wildfire risks and maintaining the infrastructural security of water systems. Insights are needed because different strategies entail heterogeneous impacts on community members. In this project, the researchers use ethnographic methods to examine how management decisions are made and the extent to which perceptions of these strategies are shared among urban and rural residents. The results are informative for management authorities and municipalities, and the researchers disseminate key findings to stakeholders. The project also contributes to the education and training of a graduate student. The project advances agency priorities in translational science by collecting data that provide paths to improve civic water engineering. This study contributes to an interdisciplinary literature on environmental governance by implementing a multifaceted research design to examine management decisions in arid regions that are prone to wildfires. To examine this question, the researchers use interviews, household surveys, stakeholder analysis, land use and systematic mapping. Perceptions of impacted residents are investigated geographically, and the holistic multi-sited design considers both urban and rural residents while contributing to geography. Results and recommendation are shared with state and county officials, community organizations, and managers. 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.