About the Study

Post-fire recovery presents a valuable opportunity for governments, communities, and individuals to strengthen resilience through an array of strategies. These might include various household and landscape-level management interventions such as prescribed burns, mechanical vegetation removal, grazing programs, risk-based land use planning, and the implementation of new building standards. We have undertaken an in-depth examination of post-fire interventions in two neighboring counties in California: Lake County and Sonoma County. These regions, despite both enduring repetitive wildfires, differ considerably in their levels of resources and capacities to respond, providing a rich contrast for analysis. We approach the study of recovery after wildfire through a socio-ecological lens, understanding that the true success of recovery lies not merely in returning human communities and ecosystems to their functional states but in amplifying their resilience to future wildfires.

Our study's objectives are multifold: we aim to document the method, timing, and spatial extent of wildfire risk reduction efforts during recovery and to understand how these efforts have emerged from resources and programs available to communities. We are specifically interested in programs that provided or assisted with housing recovery after wildfires, home hardening for wildfires, establishing or maintaining defensible space around structures, and managing fuels and vegetation. Equipped with this information, we will then model the potential risk reduction outcomes of these recovery efforts. This involves integrating ecological and social data to gauge resilience against future wildfire losses. Landscape-level wildfire modeling is one of the ways in which we will assess the risk reduction outcomes of recovery efforts. Our ultimate goal is to blend our qualitative and quantitative findings to discern the keys to enhancing socio-ecological resilience.

To conduct this comprehensive analysis, we employ various research methodologies. Our first step involves semi-structured interviews with a broad spectrum of stakeholders, from community leaders to government officials, land developers, and homebuilders. These interviews will aid in documenting specific post-fire risk reduction efforts and will elicit stakeholders' perceptions of the efficacy of these measures. This process will not only provide valuable insights into the origin of these programs but will also guide the collection of quantitative and geospatial data on their impacts. With this rich dataset, we will initialize a modeling exercise to discern changes in wildfire risk under potential future wildfire scenarios in each county. The final stage of our research is a series of community workshops where we synthesize our qualitative and quantitative findings, thereby identifying interventions or combinations thereof that most effectively bolster wildfire resilience. This study seeks to chart a path toward a more resilient future, arming communities with the knowledge and strategies necessary to minimize the risk and devastation of future wildfires.