Effective Communication a bout Wildfire Management: Observations from 20 years of fire social scienc e research
Present ed by: Sarah McCaff rey
Fire management in the United States is currently facing numerous challenges. While many of these challenges involve questions about how to increase pace and scale of fuels treatments and adapt to longer, sometimes year-round, fire seasons a nd more frequent extreme fires, there is also a need to adapt wildfire comm unication efforts to changing fire management needs and practices. This pr esentation will discuss insights from two decades of fire social science re search about a range of topics to consider in improving wildfire communicat ion including issues with conflation of language (prevention is not mitigat ion), when more rather than less complex explanations may be merited, and t he need to account for how fire fits in everyday lives. The presentation w ill draw from general Communication, Natural Hazards, and Risk Communicatio n theory, as well as specific fire social science research findings, about topics and approaches that are more or less likely to resonate with the pub lic.