Recipient Organization
OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
CORVALLIS,OR 97331
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
1. The Pacific Northwest (PNW) faces increasing occurrence and impacts from wildfire, intertwined with forest health issues and the effects of climate change.Together, this challenges community safety and health, effective land management and restoration, and the economic conditions of the forestry and wood products sectors. Researchers have identified extensive needs for climate-adapted forest management to reduce wildfire risk and restore wildfire's ecological roles in order to improve the resilience of forests and communities. The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Strategy and USDA Forest Service's Wildfire Crisis Strategy are major efforts in response. Eight Crisis Strategy landscapes are located in the PNW. These needs will also require a large, sustainable trained workforce that can act at the scale needed before, during, and after fires. The 2023 report of the Federal Wildfire Commission warned that the scope and scale of the existing workforce was insufficent for the current situation and that this issue will only escalate as climate-driven shifts in wildfire frequency and severity continue to increase in coming years. One reason why this workforce is unsustainable is that it relies on the labor of marginalized populations and does not consistently provide fair wages, safe working conditions, opportunities for career advancement, or recognitional equity of workers. There is a strong need to produce innovations that encourage growth of a skilled and more equitable workforce, and support land managers in utilizing this workforce strategically, in a science-based and community-supported manner, at the spatial and temporal scales at which climate-driven disturbance is occurring.2. This complex issue requires novel research, education, and extension that is interdisciplinary and in collaboration with community partners. We assembled a diverse team of universities and non-profit partners to work together to implement the following integrated approaches to build and apply new knowledge:Research: We will use secondary data analysis to understand trends in forest restoration and fire mitigation, suppression, and restoration activities, employment, and labor. We will also quantify thescale and spatiality of needed climate adaptation in the Pacific Northwest by developinga set of spatial models of major forestry and wildfire contracting activities between 2000 and 2020. This will be augmented by qualitative case studies that explore how managers and partners can most effectively work together to implement resiliency practices while investing in a sustainable and equitable workforce. We will also survey businesses to update a calculator tool that can quantify the economic impacts of wildfire mitigation and restoration projects.Education: We will build the capacity of educational leaders to support a sustainable forestry and fire workforce by increasing awareness among Extension and research/teaching faculty so that they can better address these issues in their informal adult education and for-credit campus programs, and investing in two existing place-based fire education programs for K-12 students.Extension: We will use multiple methods to increase safety, equity, and involvement of workers in decision making. These will include 1) expanding an existing promotora (community health worker) program that provides direct communication and training to workers, 2) worker trainingsand bilingual certified burn manager trainings for current and future entrepreneurs that offer climate adaptation skills building and peer learning, 3) a custom phone app that workers can use to access information about available legal resources, rights, and training opportunities where they are located, 4) a new coalition of aligned partners to advance application of project results to increase workforce equity and scale climate adaptation in forestry, and a toolkit for this coalition to use in communicating results and shared messages, and 5) a worker task force to increase procedural equity in forestry/wildfire collaboratives and inform project evaluation, which will include Latine workers, youths, and formerly incarcerated individuals.3. Through these approaches, our ultimate goal is to support a sustainable and equitable economy that ensures functional forest ecosystems are resilient to wildfire and can sustain the myriad goods and services that the forestry sector provides. Although our project cannot be expected to entirely transform all system challenges, we hope to achieve several meaningful short and medium-term outcomes by demonstrating and scaling specific innovations in landscape prioritization, engagement of underserved populations, and climate adaptation practices, leading to longer-term outcomes aligned with AFRI's goals: a more sustainable forestry system based in equitable economic opportunity that is resilient to climate change and supports quality of life for all who work in, live in, and rely on forests. We willgenerate new knowledge about the economy and geography of need for wildfire mitigation, build skills among workers and businesses, and increase the overall capacity of university and nonprofit partners to work together towards shared goals of a resilient and equitable climateadaptation workforce. Our integrated approaches together are intended to support reduction of wildfire risk and increase carbon sequestration by increasing a workforce that can help minimize large, severe fires that impair that ecosystem service in forests; and can help limit losses to timber, recreation, drinking water supplies, and other critical values. This project also aims to improve the long-term sustainability of forested social-ecological systems as our focus on large landscapes and innovating change with public land managers allows us to scale our impacts within the PNW and produce implications relevant for the U.S. West and other fire-prone areas across the nation. As the PNW is home to a concentration of businesses that perform wildfire mitigation, restoration, and recovery around the entire U.S., how we implement workforce solutions has implications beyond the region, particularly for H-2B program use and contracting structures.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
100%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
Our long-term goal is a sustainable and equitable economy wherein forest ecosystems are resilient to wildfire and can sustain crucial goods and services that the forestry sector provides. Our research objective is to build interdisciplinary knowledge of drivers of inequity and workforce unsustainability to inform education and extension solutions. Our education objective is to grow K-12 and higher education faculty's capacity to address climate resiliency and equity through inclusive pedagogy. Our extension objectives are to implement culturally responsive programming that tangibly improves equity of this workforce and its ability to implement climate smart adaptation, and to apply results to decision making about climate adaptation in forestry and wildfire response at local, regional, and national scales. This supports SAS core program area priority 3 by improving resilience of the forestry sector. It will demonstrate and scale innovations in landscape prioritization, engagement of underserved populations, and climate adaptation practices, leading to longer-term outcomes aligned with AFRI's goals: a more sustainable forestry system based in equitable economic opportunity that is resilient to climate change and supports quality of life for all who work in, live in, and rely on forests.
Project Methods
We will undertake activities at several levels to generate knowledge and disseminate it at appropriate scales.Secondary data analysis will be used to understand trends in forest restoration and fire mitigation, suppression, and restoration activities, employment, and labor.We will also quantify thescale and spatiality of needed climate adaptation by developinga set of spatial models of major contracting activities between 2000 and 2020 in the PNW using Generalized Additive Model (GAM) and the spatially-linked contracting datasets created through secondary data analysis.We will conduct two case studies of high wildfire risk landscapes with significant levels of wildfire mitigation and recovery activity, collaborative partnerships, and landscape scale efforts.We will innovate a modernized version of the Oregon Restoration Economy Calculator (Sundstrom et al. 2011), the PNW Restoration and Mitigation Economy (WRME) calculator, to quantify economic impacts of wildfire mitigation and restoration projects and landscape level scenarios in the PNW. New inputs to the model will be created from a mixed mode survey of businesses.We will synthesize findings from the research, experience from extension activities, and approximately 25 key informant interviews with decision makers, agency leadership, and relevant academic experts to assess evidence of project outcomes (see logic model) and envision systems implications of our goals and solutions. We will identify scenarios wherein system components shift--e.g., temporary foreign and incarcerated worker programs expand in size or are removed, policies and laws requiring worker protections are increased or adjusted, training and outreach is implemented at scale, wildfire occurrence and impacts increase or decrease--and theorize about possible long-term implications and unintended consequences at and across local, regional, and national scales.We will grow programs for K-12 teachers to prepare students for careers in climate adaptation by investing in existing fire education programs led by the Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative (SOFRC). These will be expanded fora broader range of culturally diverse students in wildfire-prone areas.We will also developa workforce equity course for faculty that improves their ability to integrate these issues in classroom and non-formal education settings. We will design the course using a survey and offer it as a self paced online course along with follow up peer learning and technical assistance.We will build durable promotora (community outreach worker) programs directly providing rights, safety, and navigation resources to the climate adaptation workforce, provide trainings to the promotoras, and track their reach and the demand for their services.We will implementand evaluate worker trainingsand bilingual certified burn manager trainings for current and future entrepreneurs that offer climate adaptation skills building and peer learning .These will be offered in several locations in the Pacific West throughout the project period.We will establisha coalition of aligned partners to advance application of project results to increase workforce equity and scale climate adaptation in forestry.The coalition willprovide a collaborative structure and toolkit to apply project results and tools, and convey implications for management and policy. This will occur through interface with our advisory group and coordination of strategic outreach opportunities at local, regional, and national levels. The toolkit will distill research findings, education outputs, and extension programming into an accessible digital compendium that includes 1) key messages, 2) briefing papers and white paper, 3) resource library, 4) slide deck template and photo library, and 5) worker voices video and storymap highlighting their perspectives.We will also create a worker task force to increase procedural equity in forestry/wildfire collaboratives and inform project evaluation. We will fund and support a task force reflecting the diversity of the climate adaptation workforce in the Pacific Northwest, specifically including Latine workers, youths, and formerly incarcerated individuals. Ten members will be recruited through the Promotora Program and coalition partners' networks, receiving honoraria for contributing their time and expertise to forest management and workforce issues. Task force responsibilities include collaborating with the coalitionto identify priorities, offer feedback on resources, and assess project outcomes. Each year, at least two task force representatives will also participate in local/regional collaborative meetings and conferences to engage decision- makers and share worker perspectives.Multiple forms of evaluation will occur: milestone tracking, programming evaluations, process reflection, outcome assessment, and examination of system dynamics. These draw on best practices from implementation evaluation (Smith et al. 2020), community health programs (Thomas et al. 2022), and culturally responsive frameworks (Anderson et al. 2022, Hall 2020) to support shared organizational learning among the project team. Implementation progress will be assessed as accomplishment of milestones (see timeline below). The project is structured around sub-teams responsible for specific activities and deliverables, which will report out at virtual team meetings and via a tracking database. We will conduct evaluation activities specific to extension and education deliverables as described to assess learning outcomes including behavior change, and elicit feedback to adjust programming. We will engage the worker task force in evaluating utility of extension activities at several points. Process reflection through interviews and focus groups will explore collaborative barriers and opportunities, efficacy of our approaches, and success of the mentoring plan. Key informant interviews will additionally assist with evaluating progress towards project outcomes (changes in knowledge, actions, and conditions; see logic model). All information gathered as described here will guide annual virtual advisory group convenings to obtain input on progress, evidence of outcomes, enhancing impacts, and shared understanding of systemic and structural barriers and levers for change.