Wildfire Risk Assessment & Communication
Each year, wildfires in the western U.S. achieve some new, tragic superlative. The largest, the deadliest, the most expensive. It's clear to me that as a society we need new ways of thinking about, planning for and responding to wildfire.
In order to support the development of fire adapted communities, resilient landscapes and safe and effective fire response, I have been engaged in multiple different risk assessment projects. Risk assessments provide essential data that support science-based, objective decision-making.
Of equal importance to the data itself is effective communication of risk. That's why I have focused on development of webpages and story maps that provide a wide range of stakeholders with opportunities to investigate and learn about wildfire risk.
Public Land Policy
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) laid the foundation for public involvement in the management of public lands. As a Conservation Connect Fellow and as a researcher at Portland State University I have been looking at the ways in which NEPA shapes the relationship between public land managers and the public.
I am interested in continuing to explore ways to illustrate the contribution of forest collaboratives to improved National Forest outcomes, and to evaluate what that might mean for proposed changes to NEPA.
RESEARCH & PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS
Collaborative Decision-Making
Particularly with respect to public land management and natural resources, effective problem-solving requires diverse input. I am interested in supporting and participating in deliberate, collaborative processes that strive to build consensus around complex natural resource and land management decisions.
For instance, I've been working with a team of researchers at Oregon State University to support implementation of Oregon 2021 Senate Bill 762. We have participated in hundreds of hours of deliberation and planning with diverse stakeholders in order to support science-based, objective solutions for mitigating wildfire risk to Oregon communities.
RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
Reilly, Matthew J.; Zuspan, Aaron; Halofsky, Joshua S.; Raymond, Crystal; McEvoy, Andy; Dye, Alex W.; Donato, Daniel C.; Kim, John B.; Potter, Brian E.; Walker, Nathan; Davis, Raymond J.; Dunn, Christopher J.; Bell, David M.; Gregory, Matthew J.; Johnston, James D.; Harvey, Brian J.; Halofsky, Jessica E.; Kerns, Becky K. 2022. Cascadia Burning: The historic, but not historically unprecedented, 2020 wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Ecosphere. 13(6): 6383-6403. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.4070.
McEvoy, Andy, Becky K. Kerns, and John B. Kim. 2021. "Hazards of Risk: Identifying Plausible Community Wildfire Disasters in Low-Frequency Fire Regimes" Forests 12, no. 7: 934. https://doi.org/10.3390/f12070934
McEvoy, A., Nielsen-Pincus, M., Holz, A., Catalano, A.J., Gleason, K.E., 2020. Projected Impact of Mid-21st Century Climate Change on Wildfire Hazard in a Major Urban Watershed outside Portland, Oregon USA. Fire 3, 70. https://doi.org/10.3390/fire3040070
Dye, A.W., Kim, J.B., McEvoy, A., Fang, F., Riley, K.L., 2021. Evaluating rural Pacific Northwest towns for wildfire evacuation vulnerability. Nat Hazards. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-021-04615-x
You cannot save the land apart from the
people, or the people apart from the land.
// Wendell Berry