Theses and Dissertations Collection

The increasing frequency and size of wildfire events across the United States and their subsequent impacts on populations living in fire-prone landscapes indicate an urgent need to strengthen community efforts to adapt to fire. Communities in the wildland-urban interface may take vastly different approaches to address wildfire risk, complicating the adoption and implementation of many policy and management efforts. Developing a stronger understanding of how varying community-wildfire interactions may change and evolve over time can offer insights about the enduring social legacies of wildfire risk and their implications for wildfire management. This dissertation presents three studies in four different communities across the Western United States designed to investigate social dimensions of wildfire before, during, and after wildfire events, including: (1) Community recovery and extra-local assistance after a large fire; (2) The influence of pre-fire and event-based cues on intended evacuation behavior; and (3) Support for regulatory approaches to wildfire risk reduction in two rural communities. I use a range of qualitative and quantitative methods to explore how communities can or are adapting to wildfire at different ‘phases’ in the duration of a wildfire’s lifespan. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of implications or recommendations for wildfire risk management in the wildland-urban interface. These efforts can inform proactive approaches to policy design and management implementation that can better support communities at different points in time and in different local contexts.