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Rethinking resilience to wildfire

Nature Sustainability volume 2, pages 797–804 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Record-breaking fire seasons are becoming increasingly common worldwide, and large wildfires are having extraordinary impacts on people and property, despite years of investments to support social–ecological resilience to wildfires. This has prompted new calls for land management and policy reforms as current land and fire management approaches have been unable to effectively respond to the rapid changes in climate and development patterns that strongly control fire behaviour and continue to exacerbate the risks and hazards to human communities. Promoting social–ecological resilience in rapidly changing, fire-susceptible landscapes requires adoption of multiple perspectives of resilience, extending beyond ‘basic resilience’ (or bouncing back to a similar state) to include ‘adaptive resilience’ and ‘transformative resilience’, which require substantial and explicit changes to social–ecological systems. Clarifying these different perspectives and identifying where they will be most effective helps prioritize efforts to better coexist with wildfire in an increasingly flammable world.

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Fig. 1: Specifying basic, adaptive and transformative-resilience goals based on social–ecological context.

Lily Jane Clarke (a); Forest Service, USDA (b,d); Oregon Department of Forestry under a Creative Commons license CC BY 2.0 (c); Bureau of Land Management (e); US DOD, (f; the appearance of US Department of Defense visual information does not imply or constitute DOD endorsement); Ray Ford, Noozhawk.com (g); Craig D. Allen / USGS (h).

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Acknowledgements

This manuscript was the result of a workshop held at the University of Montana in May 2017, titled ‘Defining ecological and social resilience in fire-prone landscapes’, funded by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) through award 16-3-01-24 to P.E.H., A.L.M., C.M., D.B.M. and E.C.M. Additional support came from the National Science Foundation, through awards BCS-1539820 and BCS-1832486 to D.B.M., DEB-1655121 to P.E.H., DEB-1719905 to Z.R. and DMS-1520873 to C.K. Z.R. was also supported by JFSP award 16-3-01-04.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA

    David B. McWethy

  2. Department of Geography, University of Colorado-Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Tania Schoennagel

  3. Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA

    Philip E. Higuera & Cara R. Nelson

  4. Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Meg Krawchuk

  5. School of Environmental and Forest Sciences University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Brian J. Harvey

  6. Department of Society and Conservation, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA

    Elizabeth C. Metcalf & Alexander L. Metcalf

  7. Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Courtney Schultz

  8. USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula, MT, USA

    Carol Miller

  9. Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Missoula, MT, USA

    Carol Miller

  10. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Colorado-Denver, Denver, CO, USA

    Brian Buma

  11. Middle Path EcoSolutions, Boulder, CO, USA

    Arika Virapongse

  12. Health Sciences, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada

    Judith C. Kulig

  13. Department of Natural Resources, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Richard C. Stedman

  14. Department of Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Zak Ratajczak

  15. College of Natural Resources, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, USA

    Crystal Kolden

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Contributions

D.B.M., T.S., P.E.H., M.K., B.J.H., E.C.M., C.S., C.M. and A.L.M. developed the outline and conceptual framework; all authors contributed ideas, provided critical feedback and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to David B. McWethy.

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McWethy, D.B., Schoennagel, T., Higuera, P.E. et al. Rethinking resilience to wildfire. Nat Sustain 2, 797–804 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0353-8

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