Working Together to Restore:
Communities In Action
Living in the West often means learning to live with wildfire. Many communities and land managers recognize the threat of wildfire to homes, lives, and forests, and have been actively working together to develop community wildfire protection plans, restore forested areas in the wildland-urban interface, protect watersheds, and promote Firewise principles for homeowners.
Communities like Flagstaff, Arizona and collaborative organizations like the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI), Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership (GFFP), and the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project (FWPP) are leaders in innovative restoration opportunities and partnerships as well as local outreach and education.
To learn more about these partnerships and initiatives, or how to better protect your community from wildfire, visit these websites:
The Economic and Social Benefits of Restoration
Healthy forests provide a myriad of economic and social benefits. Forests offer ecosystem services like clean water, carbon storage, flood and erosion control, and recreation opportunities, and throughout much of the West they often support vital tourist economies. Restorative mechanical thinning treatments make economic and ecological sense because they promote economic development in local economies while reducing wildfire risk and restoring ecosystem health.
To better understand the economic trade-offs of restoration, the ERI has worked closely with Northern Arizona University-affiliated and independent economists on full-cost accounting and cost avoidance studies that examine the direct, indirect, and hidden costs of severe wildfires. In addition to economic analyses, ERI studies social impacts of wildfire.
Below are several of our most recent white papers that explore the social and economic implications of wildfire and restoration:
- WHITE PAPER: Assessment of Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP) in Arizona and Throughout the West (2020)
- WHITE PAPER: Wildfire Trends Across the Western US: Forest Fires Have Increased in Size, Severity, and Frequency Across Western Forests (2020)
- WHITE PAPER: Administrative and Legal Review Opportunities for Collaborative Groups (2015)
- WHITE PAPER: Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project: Creating Solutions through Community Partnerships(2015)
- WHITE PAPER: A Full Cost Accounting of the 2010 Schultz Fire (2013)
- WHITE PAPER: The Efficacy of Hazardous Fuel Treatments: A Rapid Assessment of the Economic and Ecologic Consequences of Alternative Hazardous Fuel Treatments (2013)
- WHITE PAPER: Forest Restoration Treatments: Their Effect on Wildland Fire Suppression Costs (2013)
- WHITE PAPER: Workforce Needs of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative Project: An Analysis (2012)
- WHITE PAPER: Ecological Restoration as Regional Economic Stimulus (2010)
Partnerships
The ERI maintains a national profile of excellence in the field of forest restoration and fire through scholarly activities, media, testimony, and participation at national meetings and other venues. Through this engagement, ERI has established more than 200 partnerships with governments, organization, and others in Arizona, the West, and across the nation.
Working Paper: Opportunities for Application of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Restoration of Pinyon-Juniper Ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau
Pinyon-juniper (PJ) savannas, woodlands, and shrublands of the Colorado Plateau are of major importance, not only as habitat for plant and animal species, but also to local human communities for goods, services, and cultural values, both traditionally and contemporarily. Although an exhaustive ethnobotanical analysis of the flora of the Colorado Plateau has not been conducted, general descriptions of uses and values of more common species in these PJ ecosystems are found in the published literature. Chronic drought, wildfire, and severe insect outbreaks, along with anthropogenic stressors such as intensive livestock grazing, clearing, modifications of fire regimes, and spread of invasive species, have substantially altered ecosystem structure and function. In response, public land managers have called for renewed focus on pinyon-juniper conservation and restoration. Successful management of these systems will target actions that assist recovery of ecological function while simultaneously engaging local human communities, particularly Indigenous nations, that have strong, multigenerational connections to the ecosystem.
Positive drought feedbacks increase tree mortality risk in dry woodlands of the US Southwest
Global increases in temperature and aridity are driving extreme droughts that severely impact dryland ecosystems operating at the margins of plant tolerance. Focusing on the pinyon–juniper woodlands of the US Southwest, researchers used a long-term monitoring network to analyze how recurrent droughts influence tree mortality. Between 1998 and 2023, tree density and stand basal area declined substantially. Since 2014, tree mortality has outpaced new recruitment, and nearly half of the surviving trees have experienced crown dieback. While tree size influenced environmental responses, and local factors like soil organic matter and mycorrhizal fungi provided a protective buffer, the cumulative stress altered woodland demographics. Consequently, these shifts triggered a 28.2% increase in future mortality risk for surviving trees across species. Recurrent droughts have effectively overcome the ecosystem’s natural resilience, proving that consecutive climate events compound long-term vulnerability rather than allowing the system to stabilize.