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Sociology of Wildfire

Stakeholder Needs Word Clouds Poster

Click to expand poster.

To better understand the needs of our stakeholders across the State, we are always looking at new, innovative ways to visualize what's important to people.

For the 2015 Nahelehele Dry Forest Symposium, HWMO created a poster for the poster session that we shared with a number of individuals involved in conservation work across the State and the Pacific. 

The poster board, designed by Pablo Beimler (Education & Outreach Coordinator) and written by Pablo, Elizabeth Pickett (Executive Director), and Ilene Grossman (Planning Assistant), emphasizes the importance of collecting agency and community input before moving forward on wildfire mitigation projects. 

Here's an abstract from the poster board:

"Addressing the wildfire issues that persist on the Hawaiian Islands requires collaboration and communication among diverse parties due to the cross-field, cross-jurisdictional nature of wildfires. For years, Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization has been a model for thoroughly engaging its partners and community members in each step of the collaboration process. One of the key reasons HWMO’s projects have been relevant and successful is that the organization only moves forward on projects that are directly driven by stakeholder’s needs. HWMO makes every effort to collect input from land managers, planners, County/State/Federal agencies, local communities, and any other parties affected by wildfire in order to truly understand what is needed on-the-ground. Our display visually highlights the plethora of input we have gathered from the past couple of years, primarily through the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) process."

Using Social Media to Involve the Public in Wildlife Research

"The University of California Cooperative Extension used social media to solicit donations to support research on the Pacific fisher, a rare forest-dwelling weasel, conducted by UC scientists. The social media campaign included blog and Facebook postings, news releases, and tweets requesting donations of single socks."

Social Marketing: Meeting the Outreach Challenges of Today

"Extension professionals can greatly benefit the communities they serve by employing some simple, but strategized marketing techniques. Six simple tools are shared to develop a social marketing toolbox."

Extension at the Wildland-Urban Interface: A Case Study of Community Fire Planning

“The recent nationwide emphasis on community fire planning provides an important new opportunity for Extension. This article presents a case study of Extension involvement in neighborhood fire planning. We describe how intensive neighborhood outreach, design, and delivery of educational programs and facilitation of a steering committee have improved neighborhood cohesion and interagency coordination in addressing wildfire issues in a 250,000-acre watershed.” 

Disaster Preparedness and the Cooperative Extension Service

"This article captures examples of Extension's involvement in the disaster realm and encourages additional work in the many aspects of community emergency preparedness.”

Forestry Mini College: A Cost-Effective Way to Educate Non-Industrial Private Forest Landowners

“This article describes the forestry mini college (FMC) format as an educational tool that can be used by Extension forestry personnel to cost-effectively deliver research-based forestry information to many private forest landowners. A description of an existing forestry mini college program in Montana provides insight as to the method's effectiveness."

Social Science at the Wildland-Urban Interface: Compendium of Research Results to Create Fire-Adapted Communities

These lessons can then be applied to fostering fire-adapted communities—those communities that understand their risk and have taken action to mitigate their vulnerability and increase resilience. 

Public Perceptions of Wildfire Risk and Forest Management in the Central Pine Barrens of Long Island

This study in the Central Pine Barrens of Long Island, New York (USA) looked at the relationships between previous experience with wildland fire, level of knowledge about forest management to reduce fire danger and attitudes toward implementing these strategies in local forests.