Presented by: Sarah McCaffrey, USDA Forest Service
April 20, 2022, 10:00AM-11:00AM MDT
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 and more frequent extreme fires, there is also a need to adapt wildfire communication efforts to changing fire management needs and practices. This presentation will discuss insights from two decades of fire social science research about a range of topics to consider in improving wildfire communication including issues with conflation of language (prevention is not mitigation), when more rather than less complex explanations may be merited, and the need to account for how fire fits in everyday lives. The presentation will draw from general Communication, Natural Hazards, and Risk Communication theory, as well as specific fire social science research findings, about topics and approaches that are more or less likely to resonate with the public.
This webinar is part of the spring 2022 Science You Can Use Webinar Series, which features land-manager focused webinars presented by Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists and collaborators. These one hour sessions will begin with concise presentations followed by Q&A and discussion.
