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1. Co-producing software for complex environmental data visualization

   Chad Zanocco, Judith Cushing (May 2018, Proceedings of 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o’18), Anneke Zuiderwijk and Charles C. Hinnant (Eds.). ACM)

   Environmental scientists, land managers, and policy actors are increasingly presented with high-stakes high-uncertainty problems stemming from human-ecosystem interactions. These interactions exacerbate already challenging issues associated with environmental policy and natural resource management. To address these problems, scientists and managers frequently use models that produce enormous geospatial and temporal datasets that are constantly modified. To help make sense of this complex and changing data, we are immersed in a co-production effort where software engineers and environmental scientists collaborate on the development of visualization software. We report on this on-going research, and find that visualization is critical not only for communicating science, but integral to many aspects of the science production pipeline and evolving data science field. We also find evidence among our collaborators that this software co-production process helps build legitimacy for the information it produces, with potential implications for generating actionable science for policy and governance. 

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2. Effects of long-term ecological research and cognitive biases on the evaluation of scientific information by public land managers in Oregon and Washington, USA

   https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-15744-300101  

   Rapp, Claire; Nelson, Michael; Bruskotter, Jeremy (January 2025, Ecology and Society)

   Natural resource managers (managers) value and use scientific information to inform their decision-making process in a variety of ways. The scientific information managers use depends on a variety of factors, including the source of the information and ease of access. Barriers, such as paywalls, insufficient capacity, and information overload play an important role in determining what scientific information managers have access and attend to. Additionally, characteristics of managers themselves also influence what scientific information they prioritize and implement. Specific factors likely play an important role in how managers evaluate the utility and strength of scientific information. We examine two potential factors, (1) the number of years of the study as an indicator of research quality, and (2) the cognitive bias to prefer confirming information. We surveyed public land managers in Oregon and Washington, USA and used a 2x2 experimental design to evaluate how time frame and agreement with prior beliefs influences the perceived usefulness of scientific information and the soundness of management prescriptions for three management issues: post-fire salvage logging, variable density thinning of mature growth stands, and translocation of native species as a climate adaptation behavior. We find in general respondents equally value the results of long-term and short-term studies but prefer information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs over information that challenges them. In open-ended responses about the soundness of action prescriptions, we found across all conditions respondents were resistant to adopting a management action because of the results of the example studies. Although previous research has examined the barriers and facilitators to getting managers access to scientific information, our study highlights the ways the mere provisioning of information does not guarantee its use, as managers evaluate information in light of their pre-existing values and beliefs. Scientists, science communicators, and boundary spanners should consider what characteristics managers use to evaluate the usefulness and applicability of information when designing studies and framing and communicating results. 

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3. Impacts of climate change on land management and wildland fire smoke in the Southeastern United States

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/addbf5  

   Johnson, Megan_M; Garcia-Menendez, Fernando (June 2025, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract Although prescribed fire is frequently used in the Southeastern United States, land managers in the region and across the country plan to expand burning to mitigate wildfire and achieve other ecological goals. However, smoke management is often considered a barrier to prescribed fire. Additionally, climate change will likely affect the frequency of acceptable meteorological conditions for prescribed burning, potentially restricting the use of the practice. Here, we examine the air quality impacts from prescribed fire and wildfire in the Southeastern U.S., the populations affected by smoke in the region, and how these impacts may change under climate change. We rely on projections of wildfire burn area and climate-driven shifts in the frequency of meteorological conditions adequate for prescribed burning, as well as a survey of Southeastern land managers investigating their anticipated response to these changes. Based on this information, we use chemical transport modeling to assess the contributions of wildfire and prescribed fire to air pollution, and project how smoke impacts may vary due to climate change and different land manager responses. We find that prescribed fire is responsible for a significant fraction of regional particulate matter pollution. Populations exposed to the most smoke tend to have higher fractions of people of color and low income. Depending on how land managers respond to changes in atmospheric conditions under climate change, prescribed fire smoke may decrease slightly in the areas with the heaviest burning or increase across much of the Southeast. Projections also show that climate-driven changes in wildfire and prescribed burning may impact compliance with recently updated air quality standards. The analysis assesses the potential consequences of climate change on air pollution over a region in which wildland fire is extensively managed, providing insight into land management strategies that call for increased application of prescribed fire. 

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4. The Impacts of Wildfire Characteristics and Employment on the Adaptive Management Strategies in the Intermountain West

   https://doi.org/10.3390/fire1030046  

   Prudencio, Liana; Choi, Ryan; Esplin, Emily; Ge, Muyang; Gillard, Natalie; Haight, Jeffrey; Belmont, Patrick; Flint, Courtney (December 2018, Fire)

   Widespread development and shifts from rural to urban areas within the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) has increased fire risks to local populations, as well as introduced complex and long-term costs and benefits to communities. We use an interdisciplinary approach to investigate how trends in fire characteristics influence adaptive management and economies in the Intermountain Western US (IMW). Specifically, we analyze area burned and fire frequency in the IMW over time, how fires in urban or rural settings influence local economies and whether fire trends and economic impacts influence managers’ perspectives and adaptive decision-making. Our analyses showed some increasing fire trends at multiple levels. Using a non-parametric event study model, we evaluated the effects of fire events in rural and urban areas on county-level private industry employment, finding short- and long-term positive effects of fire on employment at several scales and some short-term negative effects for specific sectors. Through interviewing 20 fire managers, we found that most recognize increasing fire trends and that there are both positive and negative economic effects of fire. We also established that many of the participants are implementing adaptive fire management strategies and we identified key challenges to mitigating increasing fire risk in the IMW. 

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5. Cultural Theory, Wildfire Information Source, and Agency Public Trust: A Central Oregon Case Study

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-023-01909-7  

   Steel, Brent S.; Lovrich, Nicholas P.; Pierce, John C. (November 2023, Environmental Management)

   As wildfires grow in frequency and severity in the U.S., especially in the western regions, understanding which information sources are trusted by households and the level of trust in natural resource agencies for wildfire management is crucial. The Theory of Motivated Reasoning suggests that trust in information sources and agencies aligns with individuals' value and ideological orientations. This study uses Cultural Theory to examine how cultural traits influence trust and use of wildfire information and management agencies. Surveys of Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) households in Deschutes County, Oregon, reveal that egalitarians are more likely to trust and use information from natural resource agencies, while individualists rely on family and neighbors. Egalitarians also trust resource managers to implement prescribed fire and forest thinning, whereas individualists are less trusting of government agencies in these efforts. The study offers recommendations for policymakers and managers to better communicate wildfire information to diverse audiences based on cultural traits and trust levels. 

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