Fire is a natural and normal ecological process, but today’s fires have grown in intensity and cost, causing more destruction to people and property. A changing climate and our outdated policy responses are amplifying these negative effects.
The federal government has many responsibilities for wildland fire management in the United States. Federal entities manage public lands where prescribed burns and wildfires occur, support wildfire response, and conduct research into fire’s impacts. Recognizing that this work will only grow, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law authorized the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission to develop and deliver a comprehensive set of new policy recommendations to Congress focused on how to “better prevent, manage, suppress, and recover from wildfires.”
About the Wildland Fire Policy Accelerator
In response to the Commission’s call for input, the Federation of American Scientists launched a Wildland Fire Policy Accelerator to source and develop actionable policy ideas aimed at improving how we live with fire. This effort is in partnership with COMPASS, the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST), and Conservation X Labs, who bring deep expertise in the accelerator topics and connections to interested communities.
Participants come from academia, the private sector, nonprofits, and national labs, and bring expertise across fire ecology, forestry, modeling, climate change, fire intelligence, cultural burning, and more. The Accelerator followed the approach of the FAS Day One Project to provide structured training, support, and policy expert feedback over several months to help participants refine their policy ideas. In the Accelertor’s second phase, a subset of these contributors will publish full memos on FAS’s website with more information about their policy recommendations.
https://fas.org/wildland-fire-recommendations/
Here's Meg Krawchuk's contributed policy pitch:
Expand capacity for effective collaboration between scientists and resource managers to inform forest management
For years, the federal government has recognized the importance of scientists and decision-makers working together to solve complex wildland fire management problems. While many successful federal programs support such collaborations, institutional barriers still stand in the way of many fruitful science coproduction and communication efforts in wildland fire management.
The federal government should expand financial and institutional support for co-production of wildland fire science and science communication to help natural resource managers make evidence-based decisions in the context of the wildfire crisis.
DETAILS
According to USGS, coproduction of science projects “focus on scientists and resource managers working closely together to produce actionable products that are used to inform natural resource management decisions.” More broadly, science communication work at the project and program level can enhance the reach and relevance of coproduced science and distill literature for decision-making applications. These approaches have been championed in the field of wildland fire science and land management for years by land management agencies (including the USGS Climate Adaptation Science Centers and US Forest Service) and funding agencies (including the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) and National Science Foundation).
However, both researchers and natural resource managers report that funding, capacity, and institutional barriers inhibit coproduced science efforts in wildland fire. For example, financial support and incentive structures (e.g., performance evaluation criteria, awards, and professional recognition) are often insufficient to support scientists in conducting longer-term collaborative, relationship-building work that can extend the reach and impact of co-produced science. Furthermore, program staff in agencies (where they exist) may lack bandwidth necessary to effectively distill large quantities of journal articles into the core “so what” conclusions needed by land management practitioners to integrate the most recent science with existing management strategies.
Addressing these gaps in coproduction and broader science communication support is crucial to maximizing the potential of scientific research to inform pressing forest management problems and capitalizing on successful investments in coproduction projects. More robust support for coproduction and communication in the wildland fire space will equip agencies to ensure that decision-makers have access to the “best available science” and can fulfill goals outlined in federal initiatives including the USFS 10-year Wildfire Crisis Strategy, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Administration’s “Year of Evidence for Action,” and the “Year of Open Science.”
Specifically, Congress should:
- Request information about existing natural resource manager efforts in federal fire agencies to engage with agency and external scientists in decision-making. If appropriate, it should then direct the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to identify critical gaps and capacity needs at these agencies to best utilize evidence-based policymaking in wildland fire management. Their findings should be reported to Congress within the next two years.
- Allocate dedicated and designated funding to the DOI and USDA for new investment in science integration, including project-specific funding for scientists (delivered through USGS and USFS) and program-wide support for federal USFS managers, the USFS Ecology Program, the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), investment landscapes, and forest collaboratives.
Specifically, the Department of Interior US Geological Survey (USGS) and US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service (USFS) should:
- Expand Support for Project-Specific Coproduction Work:
- Initiate focus panels to work with USGS Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs) to develop a program that provides funding support to researchers and practitioners in conducting longer-term science integration work on a project-by-project basis.
- Initiate a focus panel to work with USDA USFS Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) and Wildfire Crisis investment landscapes to develop an ongoing funding call to support scientists and practitioners in longer-term integration of fire and climate science into project-by-project and program-wide collaborative activities.
- Expand Program Support for Science Translation:
- Expand the JFSP multi-agency funding initiative to support a broader reach of coproduced wildland fire research, including support for science translation capacity.
- Expand the successful USFS Ecology Program from Regions 5 and 6 to all Forest Service regions in the United States and add program staff to existing programs.
- Support USGS CASCs to expand programs to assist practitioners in applying wildland fire and climate adaptation science to management tasks.
These investments would total less than the current price tag of existing coproduction work but extend the reach and impact of initial investments.
Meg Krawchuk, Associate Professor, Oregon State University